Good news for Musk as Twitter’s global market share up by 55% in 2022

NEW DELHI: Twitter’s market share has surged by 55.8 per cent in 2022 amid Elon Musk’s takeover, while Facebook’s share plunged by 11.86 per cent till November across desktop and mobile devices worldwide, a new report has revealed.

According to data compiled by Finbold, a breakdown of the market share indicates that Facebook began the year at 76.85 per cent while in November, the value stood at 67.73 per cent.

Elsewhere, in January, Twitter had a market share of 7.16 per cent while as of November, the figure stood at 11.16 per cent.

In recent months, both platforms have recorded a fluctuation in the market share, with Twitter appearing to have the upper hand from a growth perspective amid ongoing internal administrative changes.

“From the data, Facebook remains the dominant social media platform, but Twitter is winning the race to expand its market share. Twitter’s share has spiked in correlation with the company’s acquisition by Tesla CEO Musk, who has already begun implementing several changes at the company,” the findings showed.

Interestingly, internal reports, also confirmed by Elon Musk, indicate that Twitter’s daily user growth attained an all-time high during the first full week of Musk’s tenure. “The performance appears to quell initial fears that Twitter might experience a mass exodus of users with Musk’s takeover,” said the Finbold.

Based on the market share data across the year, it can be assumed that Musk has influenced the numbers; for instance, the share spiked around May when the deal was first announced but appeared to plunge after he initially backed out. Besides the Musk factor and promises to make a change, Twitter’s growth can also be attributed to elements like changing the design. “Interestingly, Twitter has previously been scrutinised for attempting to emulate Facebook, especially with the rollout of its stories-like Fleets. However, Twitter resorted to shutting down the feature due to a lack of user interest, said the report.

Musk ends remote work at Twitter, tells staff ‘difficult times ahead’

Elon Musk has brought an immediate end to remote work at Twitter for the remaining 50 per cent of the employees, warning them that “the road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed”. In his first email sent to the employees, the new Twitter CEO said that “over the next few days, the absolute top priority is finding and suspending any verified bots/trolls/spam”. Musk warned that a weaker economic environment in the US would mean difficulties for Twitter and there was “no way to sugarcoat the message” about these challenges. He also reportedly told employees that they should be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week. Musk, however, said he would only approve remote work on a case-by-case basis.

To let Twitter users make digital payments, earn more

As more advertisers pause spending on Twitter, Musk has shared his digital payments plans with them where users will be able to send money to others like China’s WeChat. In a live-streamed meeting with advertisers, Musk detailed his vision for Twitter to enter the digital payments market, it was reported. According to him, users would be able to send money, “extract their funds to authenticated bank accounts and, later, perhaps, be offered a high-yield money market account to encourage them to move their cash to Twitter”.

Twitter last week filed registration paperwork with the US authorities to allow it to process payments on the platform. In his online meeting with advertisers late on Wednesday, Musk told them how paid verification via Blue subscription service and support for a creator ecosystem could herald payments on Twitter. Twitter Blue subscribers have to sign up using a credit or debit card and have their payments processed through the app stores’ in-app purchase system.

“Now we can say, okay, you’ve got a balance on your account. Do you want to send money to someone else within Twitter? Musk told advertisers. The user can then move the money out of Twitter by transferring it to an authenticated bank account.

Musk also detailed how Twitter users can earn high interest rates. “The next step would be this offer for an extremely compelling money market account where you get an extremely high yield on your balance,” he said.

“Then add debit cards, checks and whatnot and...just basically make the system as useful as possible. And the more useful and entertaining it is, the more people will use it,” he said. Musk, however, did not speak on cryptocurrencies as part of his payments vision for Twitter. Last month, Musk said buying Twitter is to fulfil his dream to build a super app called X.com like China’s WeChat that will be available to all globally.

In 1999, Musk co-founded an online bank called X.com, which was later merged to form PayPal.

On Thursday, Musk said Twitter has rolled out the new verified Blue subscription service for $8 on iOS in a few countries and will soon add “granularities” to verified badges. After abruptly killing the gray ‘Official’ badge for government accounts, Musk said that the company will now add organisational affiliation and ID verification to verified accounts with Blue badges.

“Rollout of new verified Blue is intentionally limited just to iOS in a few countries with very little promotion. As we iron out issues, we will expand worldwide on all platforms,” said the new Twitter CEO. In days to come, “we’ll add granularity to verified badge, such as organisational affiliation and ID verification”, he added.

Musk also said Twitter will soon purge accounts that haven’t been active for months.

When a follower said Twitter DMs are cool but lack some features, Musk replied that the “goal of Twitter DMs is to superset Signal”. “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t,” he posted. Musk on Wednesday killed the gray “official” verification badge after rolling it out for some users, saying that the Blue check will be the great leveller on the platform.

Twitter earlier started giving gray badges to government officials and public figures globally, including in India, but later reversed the change.

Musk has confirmed that the new Twitter Blue subscription service for $8 will be available in India in less than a month.