According to slides shared by Musk, new user signups are at an all-time high on Twitter. Over a seven-day period that ended on November 16th, the company added two million new users on average every day. That’s 66 percent more than the average new users the platform gained during the same period last year. Time spent on the platform also reached an all-time high around the same week. People used Twitter for almost eight billion minutes every day, a 30 percent increase from last year, Additionally, Musk revealed that Twitter’s mDAUs (monetizable daily active users) have passed the quarter billion mark under his reign. As of November 20, the platform had 253.9 million mDAUs. Despite rapid growth in users and usage time, hate speech impressions are now lower than before, the Twitter CEO claimed showing a graph. He also reported that impersonation on the platform has fallen after a massive spike in the first couple of weeks under his reign. The sudden increase in impersonation on Twitter came around the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue. It offered the blue verification tick to anyone paying $7.99 to the company, without having to get their account verified. People exploited this to create seemingly verified fake accounts impersonating celebrities and posting tweets that could mislead unsuspecting users. It all got so messy that Twitter had to entirely withdraw the Blue subscription service.
Elon Musk also revealed what’s next for Twitter 2.0
Musk claims that Twitter 2.0 will be “the everything app”. He shared some of his plans for the future of the social media platform. Encrypted messaging is one of his priorities. Twitter has been working on encrypted messaging for years but never rolled out the feature publicly. Support for long-form tweets is also something Musk has been talking about for the past several weeks. Additionally, Musk plans to relaunch Twitter Blue soon. Along with the existing features such as a customizable navigation bar, the subscription service will also give users the aforementioned verification checkmark, support for longer videos, and fewer ads. Hopefully, it has worked out a plan to stop mass impersonation and the potential misuse of the blue tick. Last but not least, Elon Musk plans to launch an in-house payment system on Twitter. This is something he has hinted about in the past as well. He wants to develop everything from debit and credit cards to other payment-related services. This is a long-term plan, but Musk likely sees the payment system as an integral part of Twitter 2.0 in the future.
