Twitter CEO Musk says user signups are at all-time high
Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk says new user signups are at an “alltime high“, even as he struggles with a mass exodus of advertisers and users fleeing to other platforms over concerns about verification and hate speech.
Signups were averaging over two million per day in the last seven days as of November 16, up 66% compared to the same week in 2021, Musk tweeted late on Saturday.
He said users’ active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly 8 billion per day in the seven days to November 15, an increase of 30% from last year.
Hate speech impersonations decreased compared to October of last year.
Reported impersonations on the platform spiked earlier this month, before and in wake of the Twitter Blue launch, according to Musk.
Musk, who also runs rocket company Spacex, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company, has said that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an “everything app” called X. Musk’s “Twitter 2.0 The Everything App” will have features like encrypted direct messages (DMS), longform tweets and payments.
In another tweet early on Sunday, Musk said he sees a “path to Twitter exceeding a billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months”.
Advertisers on Twitter, including big companies such as General Motors and Volkswagen AG, have suspended their adverts as they grapple with the new boss.
Musk has said that Twitter was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat, blaming a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing the platform’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation.
Hundreds of Twitter employees are believed to have quit the beleaguered company, following an ultimatum by Musk that staffers sign up for “long hours at high intensity”, or leave.
The company earlier in November laid off half its workforce, with teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics being gutted, as well as some product and engineering teams.