As #RIPTwitter trends and the media are awash with coverage lamenting the site’s apparently imminent demise, a look at the actual data on Twitter’s usage suggests that the platform is far from dead. While Twitter is losing both employees and advertisers, and a few high-profile celebrities have departed, the platform’s core user base appears to be as engaged as ever — a point Elon Musk himself made recently. What do the numbers tell us?
While Twitter no longer regularly releases official statistics on daily tweet volume, its vital statistics can be estimated from its public data feeds. The timeline below shows the estimated total daily tweets (blue) and tweeting users (orange) from Jan. 1, 2012, through Nov. 8, 2022. Peaking in July 2013, Twitter’s popularity slowly declined over the years, until pandemic lockdowns led to skyrocketing growth — a surge that was wiped away just six months later, when Twitter’s 2020 election anti-misinformation efforts went astray. As Musk’s Twitter takeover became more likely over the last few months, daily tweet volume actually increased and has remained stable in the weeks since his acquisition.
