Twitter is seeing more signups than ever and is on course for a billion users by 2024, Elon Musk claims

The ‘everything app’ could replace TikTok, Amazon and more, billionaire suggests

Andrew Griffin
Monday 28 November 2022 17:27 GMT
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Twitter is seeing all-time high signups and is on course for a billion users and to replace TikTok and Amazon, Elon Musk has claimed.

Mr Musk made the predictions as he struggles with both advertisers and users leaving the platform amid fears for its future.

As he looked to paint a brighter pic of Twitter’s fortunes, he claimed that it will one day serve as the “everything app”, integrating payment, entertainment and more.

When a user suggested that it will replace “TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, Google, and every news outlet”, he said he is “optimistic that we will make some progress”.

And he suggested that it will have a billion users by 2024.

Signups were averaging over two million per day in the last seven days as of November 16, up 66 per cent compared to the same week in 2021, Musk said in a tweet late on Saturday.

He also said that user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly 8 billion active minutes per day in the last seven days as of November 15, an increase of 30 per cent in comparison to the same week last year.

Hate speech impressions decreased as of November 13 compared to October of last year.

Reported impersonations on the platform spiked earlier this month, before and in wake of the Twitter Blue launch, according to Musk.

Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company, has said that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an “everything app” called X.

Musk‘s “Twitter 2.0 The Everything App” will have features like encrypted direct messages (DMs), longform tweets and payments, according to the tweet.

Advertisers on Twitter, including big companies such as General Motors, Mondelez International, Volkswagen AG, have paused advertising on the platform, as they grapple with the new boss.

Musk has said that Twitter was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser retreat, blaming a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing the platform’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation.

Activists are urging Twitter‘s advertisers to issue statements about pulling their ads off the social media platform after Musk lifted the ban on tweets by former U.S. president Donald Trump.

Hundreds of Twitter employees are believed to have quit the beleaguered company, following an ultimatum by Musk that staffers sign up for “long hours at high intensity,” or leave.

The company earlier in November laid off half its workforce, with teams responsible for communications, content curation, human rights and machine learning ethics being gutted, as well as some product and engineering teams.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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