X, One Year Later: How Elon Musk Made a Mess of Twitter’s Business

A year after Elon Musk bought Twitter because, he said, doing so was “important to the future of civilization,” he’s made the social media service smaller in almost every way. About 13% fewer users signed on each day in September, compared with last October, according to data firm Apptopia. The company employs about 1,500 people, down from 7,500 the day Musk bought it. And a platform that was once a key online gathering place for media professionals, political activists and news junkies is rapidly losing its relevance as a lively source of real-time information and debate.

The main plank of Musk’s plan for Twitter (now called X) was to shift away from advertising and toward paid subscriptions. A new analysis from independent researcher Travis Brown estimates that 950,000 to 1.2 million people now pay for X’s $8 monthly premium service. That means X persuaded less than 1% of users to sign up—and translates to revenue of less than $120 million annually from the company’s subscription service, not including app store fees from Apple Inc. and Google.