Oct 25 (Portal) – ‘Is Twitter dying?’ Billionaire Elon Musk mused in April, five days before offering to buy the social media platform.
The reality goes far beyond the handful of examples of celebrities depicting their own accounts as ghosts, according to Twitter’s (TWTR.N) internal Portal research. Twitter is struggling to hold onto its most active users — who are vital to the company — underscoring a challenge Tesla (TSLA.O) chief executive officer faces as he nears a deadline to hit his 44 billion -Complete dollar deal to purchase the company.
These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of total monthly users, but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have “absolutely decreased” since the pandemic began, wrote one Twitter researcher in an internal document titled “Where Have Tweeters Gone?”.
A “heavy tweeter” is defined as someone who logs on to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week, the document said.
The study also found a shift in interests over the past two years among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users that may make the platform less attractive to advertisers.
According to the report, cryptocurrencies and not safe for work (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the fastest growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users.
At the same time, these users are losing interest in news, sports and entertainment. Tweets on these topics, which have helped Twitter polish its image as what Musk once called the world’s “digital marketplace,” are also the most sought-after by advertisers.
Twitter declined to say how many of its tweets are in English or how much money it makes from English speakers. But demographics matter to Twitter’s business, some analysts say.
According to its investor letter, the platform generated more ad revenue in the United States alone in the fourth quarter than all other markets combined, and most ads in the United States are likely targeting English-speaking users, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence.
Twitter’s study looked at the number of frequent tweeters in English who showed interest in a topic based on the accounts they followed and how that number of users has changed over the past two years.
Twitter was motivated to examine “worrying” user trends that may have been obscured by the overall growth in daily active users and to better understand the decline in the company’s most active users, the documents said. The study did not draw any specific conclusions as to why the number of heavy users of the platform is declining.
When asked to comment on the findings of the internal documents, a Twitter spokesman said on Monday: “We regularly conduct research into a variety of trends that are evolving based on what’s happening in the world. Our total audience has continued to grow, reaching 238 million mDAU in Q2 2022,” said the spokesperson, using an acronym for monetizable daily active users.
CONTENT “NOT SAFE FOR WORK”.
The number of heavy users interested in NSFW and cryptocurrency content was growing, according to the research.
Twitter is one of the few major social media platforms to allow nudity on its service, and the company has estimated that adult content accounts for 13% of Twitter, according to a separate internal presentation by Portal. How the number was calculated was not explained in detail in the presentation.
Advertisers generally avoid controversy or nudity for fear of damaging their brands. Major advertisers, including Dyson, PBS Kids and Forbes, have halted their advertising in response to accounts soliciting child pornography on Twitter, Portal reported in September.
In response to the September story, Twitter said it has “zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and is investing more resources in its work against such material.
Twitter’s most active English-speaking users also became increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies, hitting an all-time high in late 2021, internal documents showed. But interest in the topic has waned since the crypto price crash in June, and the study noted that cryptocurrencies may not be a growth area going forward.
Current and former Twitter employees who spoke to Portal said they feared Musk’s calls for less content moderation and his reported plans to eviscerate employees, which they said would exacerbate the deterioration in content quality.
“DEVASTATING” LOSSES
Topics that have traditionally made Twitter a popular platform for millions of users are now declining among the most active English-speaking users, the documents show.
Interest in world news, as well as in liberal politics, peaked during major events such as the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. But the categories have since lost the highest number of heavy Twitter users and show no signs of recovery, the report said.
Twitter is also losing a “devastating” percentage of frequent users who are interested in fashion or celebrities like the Kardashian family. Those users are likely to migrate to competing platforms like Meta Platform (META.O)’s Instagram and ByteDance’s TikTok, a Twitter researcher wrote.
The study also expressed surprise at the decline in interest in esports and online streaming personalities, which had previously grown rapidly on Twitter. “The large communities are now in decline,” the report said.
“It seems like there is a significant disconnect between what I would envision as our company values and our growth patterns,” one Twitter researcher wrote.
Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis
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