Twitter seems to be losing its popularity as the social media platform is reportedly struggling to keep its most active users, who are vital to the business.
Heavy tweeters – who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week - have been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
These "heavy tweeters" account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue, Reuters report said.
This comes at a time when Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to close his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.
The research also found a shift in interests over the past two years among Twitter's most active English-speaking users that could make the platform less attractive to advertisers.
Cryptocurrency and "not safe for work" (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest-growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users, as per the report.
The report shows these users’ interest in topics desirable for advertisers such as news, sports and entertainment is also waning.
Twitter was motivated to investigate “disturbing” trends among users that may have been masked by overall growth in daily active users and better understand the decline in the company’s most active users, as per the documents.
The study made no specific conclusions about why heavy users of the platform are declining.
Meanwhile, a Twitter spokesperson said: "We regularly conduct research on a wide variety of trends, which evolve based on what’s happening in the world. Our overall audience has continued to grow, reaching 238 million mDAU in Q2 2022."
Twitter is also losing a “devastating” percentage of heavy users who are interested in fashion or celebrities such as the Kardashian family. These users are likely decamping to rival platforms like Meta Platform's Instagram and ByteDance's TikTok, a Twitter researcher wrote.
The study also expressed surprise about the decline in interest for e-sports and online streaming personalities, which were previously growing quickly across Twitter.
