Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform’s direct messaging feature, including the introduction of encryption.
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Power users of Twitter are still using the app, but fewer are posting on it since it was acquired by Elon Musk late last year, according to one poll From the Pew Research Center.
“The center’s new analysis of actual behavior on the site found that users who were most active before Musk’s acquisition — defined as the top 20 percent by number of tweets — were more active in the months after, the survey’s authors wrote Wednesday. The number of tweets from these users has dropped significantly.” “After the acquisition, the average number of tweets per month by these users has dropped by about 25%.”
Additionally, about six in 10 U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year say they have recently stopped using the service, while a quarter say they won’t be in a year from now, according to the survey. Use Twitter.
The new data underscores the challenges facing Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who is set to succeed Musk. She will take over the ailing social media service, which has lost some advertisers over the past few months due to concerns over the proliferation of racist and other inappropriate content since Musk took over.
Yaccarino, who recently stepped down as NBCUniversal’s head of global advertising, needed to mend relationships with Twitter advertisers and master content moderation. Musk acknowledged in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that he had cut the company’s workforce by about 80% to about 1,500 employees, eliminating some employees he should have kept.
“Extremis needs Extremis,” Musk said. “So there’s no question that some of the people who were fired probably shouldn’t have been fired.”
The Pew survey also revealed that much of Twitter’s content is produced by a small group of power users.
“Since Musk’s acquisition, 20% of U.S. adults on the site have tweeted 98% of all tweets from that group,” the survey said.
In response to a request for comment, Twitter responded with the now-common poop emoji.