Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform’s instant messaging feature including the introduction of encryption.
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Twitter’s power users still come to the app, but fewer have signed up since then Elon Musk’s acquisition at the end of last year, according to a investigation from the Pew Research Center.
“The Center’s new analysis of actual behavior on the site shows that the most active users before Musk’s acquisition — defined as the top 20 percent of tweet volume — have seen a noticeable drop in posting in the months since,” the study’s authors wrote Wednesday. “These users’ average number of tweets per month decreased by about 25% after the acquisition.”
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Additionally, about six in 10 American adults who have used Twitter in the past year said they have recently taken breaks from the service, and a quarter of the group indicated they will not use Twitter in a year, according to the survey.
The new data underscores the challenges facing Twitter’s incoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who will replace Musk. She will take over the ailing social media service, which has lost a number of advertisers in recent months amid concerns that racist and otherwise inappropriate content has flourished since Musk’s takeover.
Yaccarino, who recently stepped down from his position as NBCUniversal’s global head of advertising, will have to repair relationships with Twitter’s advertisers and get a handle on content moderation. Musk has cut the company’s workforce by about 80% to about 1,500 employees, shedding some people he should have kept, he acknowledged in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Musk said. “So there’s no question that some of the people who were released probably shouldn’t have been released.”
The Pew survey also found that most of Twitter’s content is produced by a small group of power users.
“Since Musk’s acquisition, 20% of US adults on the site have produced 98% of all tweets by this group,” the survey said.
When asked for comment, Twitter responded with its now standard poo emoji.
Look at: Elon Musk on Twitter’s new CEO
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