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Twitter is losing its most active users amid competition from TikTok and Instagram, internal documents show

  • The number of heavy tweeters, who typically post three or four times a week and make up half of Twitter’s global revenue, has been in decline
  • Cryptocurrency and not-safe-for-work content are the highest-growing English topics, possibly denting advertiser interest

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The Twitter app seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken July 13, 2021. Photo: Reuters
Reuters

“Is Twitter dying?” billionaire Elon Musk mused in April, five days before offering to buy the social media platform.

The reality, according to internal Twitter research seen by Reuters, goes far beyond the handful of examples of celebrities ghosting their own accounts. Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users – who are vital to the business – engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla Inc chief executive as he approaches a deadline to close his US$44 billion deal to buy the company.

These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10 per cent of monthly overall users but generate 90 per cent of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”

A “heavy tweeter” is defined as someone who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week, the document said.

The research also found a shift in interests over the past two years among Twitter’s most active English-speaking users that could make the platform less attractive to advertisers.

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