Things have been far from smooth for Elon Musk’s “new Twitter,” also known as Twitter 2.0. A month after the leadership change, there have been many ups and downs on the platform. But one thing that continues to grow is Twitter usage. People have been crowding the social media app since Musk completed the acquisition last month.
According to the slides Musk shared, new user signups on Twitter are at an all-time high. For a seven-day period ending November 16, the company added an average of two million new users each day. That’s 66 percent more than the average new users added to the platform over the same period last year. Time spent on the platform also reached an all-time high around the same week. People used Twitter for nearly eight billion minutes every day, a 30 percent increase from the previous year.
Also musk uncovered that Twitter’s mDAUs (monetizable daily active users) passed the quarter-billion mark under his rule. As of November 20, the platform had 253.9 million mDAUs. Despite the rapid growth in users and usage time, impressions of hate speech are now lower than before, the Twitter CEO claimed, showing a chart. He also reported that impersonation on the platform had declined after a massive spike in the first few weeks under his rule.
The sudden surge in impersonation on Twitter came around the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue. It offered the blue verification tick to anyone who paid $7.99 to the company without having to verify their account. People took advantage of this to create seemingly verified fake accounts impersonating celebrities and posting tweets that could mislead unsuspecting users. It all got so messy that Twitter had to withdraw the Blue subscription service entirely.
Elon Musk also revealed what’s next for Twitter 2.0
Musk claims that Twitter 2.0 will be “the everything app.” He shared some of his plans for the future of the social media platform. Encrypted messaging is one of his priorities. Twitter has been working on encrypted messaging for years but has never publicly rolled out the feature. Supporting long-form tweets is also something Musk has been talking about for the past few weeks.
Additionally, Musk plans to relaunch Twitter Blue soon. Besides the existing features like a customizable navigation bar, the subscription service also offers users the aforementioned verification tick, support for longer videos, and fewer ads. Hopefully they have come up with a plan to stop mass identity and the possible misuse of the blue tick.
Last but not least, Elon Musk is planning to launch an in-house payment system on Twitter. He has also indicated this in the past. He wants to develop everything from debit and credit cards to other payment-related services. This is a long-term plan, but Musk likely sees the payment system as an integral part of Twitter 2.0 in the future.
