Internal documents, Twitter loses its most active users | Business and Economy News

“Is Twitter dying?” billionaire Elon Musk deep in thought In April, five days before he offered to buy the social media platform.

According to internal Twitter research seen by the Reuters news agency, the truth goes far beyond the handful of celebrities shadowing their own accounts. Twitter struggles to keep its most business-critical users engaged, highlighting a challenge the Tesla Inc CEO faces as the deadline approaches to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.

These “heavy tweeters” make up less than 10 percent of total monthly users, but they account for 90 percent of all tweets and half of global revenue. A Twitter researcher asked, “Where Did the Tweeters Go?” He wrote in an internal document titled that heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began.

In the document, a “heavy tweeter” is defined as someone who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets three to four times a week.

The research also found a change in interests among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users over the past two years, which could make the platform less attractive to advertisers.

The report found that cryptocurrency and “non-safe for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the top growing topics of interest among heavy English-speaking users.

At the same time, interest in news, sports and entertainment is declining among these users. The tweets on these topics that have helped Twitter shine an image of the world as the “digital town square,” as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers.

Twitter declined to specify how many of its tweets were in English or how much money it made from English speakers. But some analysts say demographics are important to Twitter’s business.

Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said the platform generated more ad revenue from the US alone in its fourth quarter than all other markets combined, with most ads in the US targeting English-speaking users, according to the investor letter. .

Twitter’s research looked at the number of English-heavy tweeters interested in a topic based on the accounts they follow, and how that number of users has changed over the past two years.

The documents said Twitter is motivated to investigate “disturbing” trends among users that may have been masked by the overall growth in daily active users, and to better understand the decline in the company’s most active users. The study did not come to any specific conclusions as to why heavy users of the platform are declining.

“We regularly conduct research on a wide variety of trends that are evolving based on what’s going on in the world. “Our overall audience continued to grow, reaching 238 million mDAU in the second quarter of 2022,” said a Twitter spokesperson on Monday when asked to comment on the findings of the internal documents using an acronym for monetizable daily active users.

‘Not safe for work’ content

The research found that the number of heavy users interested in NSFW and cryptocurrency content has increased.

Interest in world news alongside liberal politics rose during major events like the attack on the US Capitol, but has since lost interest among users. [File: Julio Cortez/AP Photo]

Twitter is one of the few leading social media platforms to allow nudity on its services, and the company estimates that adult content makes up 13 percent of Twitter, according to a separate internal slide presentation seen by Reuters. The presentation did not elaborate on how the figure was calculated.

Advertisers often avoid controversy or nudity for fear of harming their brand. Major advertisers, including Dyson, PBS Kids, and Forbes, have suspended ads on Twitter due to accounts requesting child pornography, Reuters reported in September.

In response to the September story, Twitter said it “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation” and is dedicating more resources to its work against such material.

Internal documents showed that Twitter’s most active English-speaking users are also increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies, hitting an all-time high in late 2021. However, interest in the topic has waned since the crypto price crash in June, and the study noted that cryptocurrencies may not be an area of ​​growth in the future.

Current and former Twitter staffers speaking to Reuters said they feared Musk’s calls for fewer content controls and his plans to intimidate staff, which they said would worsen the deterioration of the quality of content.

‘Destructive’ losses

The documents show that the topics that have traditionally made Twitter a popular platform for its millions of users are now in decline among the most active English-speaking users.

Interest in world news and liberal politics spiked during major events such as the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. But the categories have since lost their highest number of heavy Twitter users and show no signs of recovery. , the report said.

Twitter is also losing a “disruptive” percentage of heavy users with an interest in fashion or celebrities like the Kardashian family. A Twitter researcher wrote that these users are likely to turn to competing platforms such as Meta Platforms Inc’s Instagram and ByteDance’s TikTok.

The study also expressed surprise at the waning interest in esports and online streaming personalities, which had previously grown rapidly on Twitter. “Large communities are now in decline,” the report said.

“There seems to be a significant discrepancy between what I can imagine being our company values ​​and growth patterns,” one Twitter researcher said.

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