The reports of X’s downfall have been greatly exaggerated: New data obtained by TheWrap shows Elon Musk’s app has offset the users it has lost post-Election Day with a surge in new downloads.
X, in the two weeks since the election, has seen U.S. downloads increase 27% compared to the prior two week period, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. And those new downloads have been critical for X.
The platform has seen a wave of disenchanted left-leaning users, celebrities, and media pundits ditch the app following the election, after Musk publicly backed Donald Trump — and spent more than $100 million to help his campaign. Many of those users have jumped over to Threads, the X-like platform owned by Meta, and Bluesky, which has been dubbed “Blue Heaven” with its recent influx of anti-Trump and anti-Musk users.
Despite those lost users, X’s user base has held steady in recent weeks — thanks in large part to new people joining the platform as others have left. X had 25 million daily active users in the States as of Tuesday, according to Sensor Tower’s research, which is the same amount it had a week after the election.
For comparison, Threads, according to Sensor Tower’s data, had 11 million American DAUs on Tuesday, and Bluesky had 622,000. Bluesky’s running user tracker shows the app has more than 21 million users on Thursday, but that is a global figure and does not specify if that reflects daily, weekly, or monthly users. Overall, Bluesky’s daily user base has increased 131% following the election.
A rep for Threads told TheWrap the app has pulled in 15 million new users in November and recently surpassed 275 million monthly users, but declined to share a daily user count for U.S. users.
Many of the high-profile users who have left X, like MSNBC’s Joy Reid, have made it clear they left the app because of the Musk-Trump alliance. Others, like Gabrielle Union and Don Lemon, have pointed to X’s updated terms of service as a key reason they left the app.
X recently changed its rules, requiring users to file lawsuits against the company in Texas — either in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas or in state courts in Tarrant County. The changes went into effect last week.
While those changes may have scared off some users, from a macro standpoint, X hasn’t seen a user exodus following the updated terms of service.
“X worldwide mobile app DAUs have remained largely unchanged from 11/15-11/17 compared to the prior seven days (11/8-11/14), indicating that there has been a minimal effect on app usage related to its terms of service changes,” Kara Lee, a brand and digital advertising analyst at Sensor Tower, told TheWrap.
