As X Loses Its Ceo, Daily Usage Is Down And Competition Is Growing

With nan departure of X CEO Linda Yaccarino, which was announced Wednesday, nan institution that defined text-first societal networking faces renewed competition.

Year-over-year, nan Elon Musk-owned societal web has seen its regular progressive personification guidelines diminution by astir 10% arsenic of nan 2nd 4th of 2025, according to caller information provided by app intelligence patient Sensor Tower. While X’s personification guidelines is still 65% larger than Meta’s Threads and 10 times larger than its next-biggest rival, Bluesky, X’s lasting triumph successful this abstraction is not guaranteed.

On mobile devices, there’s already immoderate denotation that Threads is catching up.

New information from marketplace intelligence supplier Similarweb released this week indicates Threads is nearing X’s regular app users connected mobile. In June 2025, Threads’ mobile app for iOS and Android saw 115.1 cardinal regular progressive users, representing 127.8% year-over-year growth; X reached 132 cardinal regular actives, arsenic its year-over-year maturation declined by 15.2%.

Image Credits:Similarweb

Overall, X is still larger than Threads acknowledgment to its much salient web presence.

X besides has different advantages, which could make for an absorbing conflict betwixt nan tech giants. On X, personification engagement and loyalty stay strong, contempt nan accrued title from Meta arsenic good arsenic unfastened root societal networking movements for illustration Bluesky and Mastodon, and different startups. According to Sensor Tower’s data, X users walk an mean of 31 minutes per time connected nan level successful nan 2nd 4th of 2025, which was astir quadruple that of Threads, astatine 8 minutes per day.

Plus, astir half (48%) of X’s world monthly app users successful nan 4th interacted pinch nan level connected a regular basis, compared pinch 33% for Threads, nan patient said.

But Threads can’t beryllium counted retired yet, simply because X is larger. Though Threads whitethorn person less regular progressive users than X, it’s been seeing stronger growth.

Over nan past year, Threads’ world app regular progressive users were up 160% year-over-year, nan Sensor Tower’s information shows, driven successful portion by nan rollout of caller features and functions, arsenic good arsenic by its ties to Meta’s different apps, for illustration Facebook and Instagram, which service arsenic funnels.

Threads is besides laser-focused connected increasing its ads ecosystem, which is nan app’s only intends of monetization for nan clip being. In April, Meta opened up Threads ads to its world advertisers, and nan pursuing period announced tests for video ads, arsenic well.

The app has nan advantage of being a portion of Meta’s larger ads business, wherever its devices are already acquainted to marketers and wherever it has nan expertise to pat into Meta’s astir 2 decades of acquisition successful maximizing advertisement revenues.

Under Yaccarino, X’s advertisement ecosystem recovered, but it’s been a volatile ride.

Advertisers successful nan media and entertainment, shopping, and gaming verticals done 2025 year-to-date
represent 25%, 22%, and 7% of full U.S. advertisement walk connected X, respectively. Each of those categories person grown since 2022 erstwhile advertisers successful nan media and entertainment, shopping, and gaming verticals represented 20%, 14%, and 2%, respectively, Sensor Tower says.

Last year, apical advertisers by U.S. advertisement walk were Samsung, Temu, State Farm, MGM, nan NFL, Robinhood, Flutter, nan NBA, Mihoyo, and Microsoft. This year, Apple, Google, Verizon, and Dell joined nan lineup of apical brands advertizing connected X.

New information from advertisement intelligence supplier Guideline besides noted that U.S. advertisement spending was up 62% year-over-year successful nan first half of 2025.

Advertising is not a zero-sum game, but nan duopoly of Meta and Google has been difficult to topple.

For Meta, nan situation was not whether it could move a profit from a caller societal networking app, but whether it had nan expertise to create a caller app that would summation traction pinch consumers. For years, it didn’t look for illustration that would beryllium nan case. The company’s only successful caller apps were those it acquired, for illustration Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meanwhile, Meta’s anterior attempts astatine building a caller societal networking app person almost wholly failed, starring to nan shutdown of experimental apps for illustration Tuned, Super, Move, Gaming, Hello, Neighborhood, Bulletin, Lasso, Moments, IGTV, Hobbi, Lifestage, Slingshot, Rooms, Rift, Notify, Paper, and others, including acquisitions for illustration tbh.

That changed pinch Threads, which leveraged Instagram’s personification guidelines to bootstrap maturation and now uses Facebook and Instagram’s apps to thrust clicks.

Today, Threads has 350 cardinal monthly progressive users, per Meta’s latest net report. X, a backstage company, is nary longer required to stock metrics publicly, but Musk has claimed antecedently that X has 600 million monthly progressive users.