Average user spends 32 minutes a day on X as Musk completes 1 yr as owner

New Delhi, Oct 27 (IANS) An average user on X is spending more than 32 minutes a day on the platform, its CEO Linda Yaccarino has revealed, as the social media company completed one-year under Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter for $344 billion on October 27 last year after much drama which saw mass employee firings.

Yaccarino said that overall, users spend 7.8 billion active minutes every day on X, driven by growth in “our video and community products”.

“Today, the average user spends more than 32 minutes of their day on X. We continue to see sign-ups average around 1.5 million per day,” she wrote in a blog post.

She said that X is now a place where everyone can freely express themselves, so long as they do so within the bounds of the law.

“We believe open and respectful discourse is the single best way for humanity to thrive. Safety on X remains a critical priority. Our work is not done, but we are making real progress,” said Yaccarino.

However, one year on, controversies associated with the platform, amid the non-stop spread of disinformation, is far from over.

From a surge in anti-semitic tweets that more than doubled over the months since Musk took charge to the European Commission formally opening a probe into X over spreading of illegal content and disinformation, the Twitter bird is yet to be freed.

Yaccarino said that their team has an ongoing dialogue with external groups to keep up to date with potential risks and support the safety of the platform -- partners like the Technology Coalition, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

“Over half a billion of the world’s most informed and influential people come to X every month. That’s inclusive of our efforts to aggressively remove spam and inauthentic accounts -- a step we believe is critical to improve the X user experience and grow the platform,” the X CEO informed.

She further stated that Community Notes now has over 100,000 contributors in 44 countries and is growing.

“This product is not perfect, but it is improving rapidly. Notes are being seen tens of millions of times per day, and they are getting much faster - a necessity in a world where breaking information is inherently uncertain and X has outperformed traditional media,” Yaccarino noted.

The average brand safety score on X is now more than 99 per cent, “and we are now seeing brand suitability scores at over 97 per cent when these controls are applied,” she further said.

According to her, over 1,700 advertisers returned to X last quarter, from small businesses to major brands -- including 90 of the top 100 ad spenders from a year ago.

“We shipped over 200 products and features post-acquisition with a significantly smaller team. How did we achieve this? We rebuilt and simplified large parts of the systems and infrastructure powering our main product surfaces from the ground up, which allowed us to maintain platform stability and innovate faster,” she said.

Through a Verified Organisations subscription, businesses can now post a job listing directly on the platform.

In a bid to retain users on its platform, X Corp has paid over $20 million (more than Rs 166 crore) to creators so far.

The company rolled out encrypted messaging to X Premium subscribers, increased the limit on group DMs to 200 and added more message reply functionality.

“We launched audio and video calling, enabling Premium subscribers to call any X handle in the world without having to give them their phone number,” said Yaccarino.