Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said new user signups to the social media platform are at an “all-time high,” 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 about 2 million per day in the last seven days as of Nov. 16, up 66 percent compared with the same week last year, Musk wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
He also said that user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly 8 billion minutes per day as of Nov. 15, an increase of 30 percent compared with the same week last year.
Photo: AP
Hate speech and impersonations decreased as of Nov. 13 compared with October of last year.
Reported impersonations on the platform spiked earlier this month, before and in wake of the Twitter Blue launch, Musk said.
Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm The Boring Co, has said that buying Twitter would hasten his ambition to create an “everything app” called X.
The “Twitter 2.0 The Everything App” is to have features such as encrypted direct messages, longform Twitter posts and payment processing, Musk said.
In Twitter statement yesterday, 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 Co, Mondelez International Inc and Volkswagen AG have paused advertising on the platform as they observe the moves of 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.
Political advocates are urging Twitter’s advertisers to issue statements about pulling their ads off the social media platform after Musk lifted the platform’s ban on former US president Donald Trump.
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 this month 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.
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