Elon Musk says X’s monthly users reach ‘new high’

The latest count of new users is more than 540 million, the billionaire writes on the microblogging platform

Workers install lighting on an 'X' sign on top of the downtown San Francisco building that housed what was formally known as Twitter, now rebranded X by owner Elon Musk, on Friday. AP

Monthly users of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, reached a "new high", owner Elon Musk said on Friday.

He shared a graph on X that showed the latest count as more than 540 million.

“Also, this is after removal of a vast number of bots,” he wrote.

The social media platform rebranded as X on Monday. The microblogging platform’s famous blue bird symbol has also been replaced.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest person, replaced his profile picture with the X symbol. The official Twitter account did the same.

Meanwhile, a giant X sign was installed on top of the building formerly known as Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Friday.

Mr Musk has long been fascinated with the letter X. One of his children is called “X”. The child’s name is a collection of letters and symbols.

He has also used the letter X in many of his companies and products, from SpaceX (2002) to the Tesla Model X, first released in 2015.

The billionaire has made a series of changes since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in October.

In April, Twitter was merged with Mr Musk’s firm X Corp, which was established in March. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings Corp, also owned by Mr Musk.

In the past, he has indicated that acquiring Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X, an “everything app”. He said he intended to make X similar to WeChat, China's most popular messaging service.

Mr Musk’s post is the latest in a series of comments from X’s executives claiming increase in usage, after Meta Platforms unveiled a rival platform called Threads on July 5.

Twitter had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Mr Musk’s acquisition of the company in October.

Mr Musk posted in November that X had 259.4 million daily active users.

The changes to the platform are part of efforts aimed at boosting user experience and diversifying Twitter's revenue sources, according to Mr Musk.

Mr Musk told the BBC in April that Twitter was roughly breaking even and would become cash-flow positive in the coming quarters as advertisers return.

However, the billionaire said this month that X’s cash flow was negative because of a nearly 50 per cent drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load, without offering details.

In May, he named former NBC Universal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as chief executive of X in a sign that ad sales were a priority.

As part of the revamp following his takeover, Mr Musk said in May that video and voice calls were “coming soon” to the platform.

With the move, Twitter would take on other established apps that offer the same feature, most notably those from Meta Platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Twitter also said it was also moving forward with plans to introduce a payments feature, steering it towards Mr Musk's goal of tapping into new revenue streams, the Financial Times reported in January.

In December, Twitter also relaunched Twitter Blue, the platform's top-tier account, which indicates that a user is verified, as a paid subscription service.

The premium feature’s fees start at $8 a month for individuals, with joiners getting subscriber-only features including Edit Tweet, 1080p video uploads, reader mode, the coveted blue check mark and longer tweets.

The costs of keeping the ticks start at $1,000 a month for organisations, plus $50 monthly for each affiliate or employee account.

Meanwhile, this month, he announced that Twitter would be temporarily limiting the number of tweets people can read in a day.

The limits are at 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts per day for unverified users and 500 posts per day for new unverified users, Mr Musk said.