Elon Musk took control of Twitter in late 2022, but it was 2023 when he remoulded the social network in his own image. For one thing, Twitter is no more. 鈥淴 is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech,鈥� the firm鈥檚 CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who was installed by Musk in June, told the Code 2023 conference in September.
Alongside that, Musk has tinkered with how tweets are displayed and heavily promoted sharing videos. In October, X began testing video and audio calls within the app.
Introducing new features cost money, even with a skeleton staff 鈥� Musk got rid of around 80 per cent of Twitter鈥檚 employees when he took over. So he introduced a subscription service that included verification (and display priority on the app鈥檚 timeline) for $8 a month, and tested charging new users in some areas $1 a year to be able to tweet 鈥� moves that Musk says are designed to weed out bots, which seem to have become more prevalent since his takeover. One by researchers at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, suggests that the bot problem is worse than ever.
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Not everyone likes the new company and its new app. Daily user numbers have since Musk took over, according to one third-party analysis by Apptopia. X served adverts for in September 2022, before Musk took over, but received ad revenue from just two of them in September 2023. of people recognise the brand name X, according to corporate reputation firm Caliber.
Beyond X鈥檚 finances, the Israel-Hamas conflict has been a particular low point for the platform, with paying, verified users sharing disingenuous content about the conflict in an effort to earn money, rather than inform fellow users. Researchers at the Brookings Institute that the changes made to X have exacerbated issues around authentic information online.
Yet none of the competitors that popped up to replace Twitter 鈥� Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Post.news, the list goes on 鈥� has managed to supplant it. One, Pebble, launched by a former Twitter employee, shut down in October after finding growing too challenging. 鈥淒espite how abominable Twitter has become, it just highlights how once a platform has a captive audience, it can be very hard for many of its users to leave to go somewhere else,鈥� says at City, University of London.
