X’s daily user base fell 10% in the year leading up to Linda Yaccarino stepping down as CEO on Wednesday, according to data shared with TheWrap from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.
This dip puts Elon Musk’s social media platform at 217 million daily users. Yaccarino took over as CEO in June 2023, about eight months after Musk purchased the platform formerly known as Twitter; because X is now a private company, it doesn’t report its daily or monthly users.
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to WRAP’s request for comment.
Still, the Sensor Tower report also noted that despite a decline in users since last year, when the 2024 presidential race was driving the news, X is “showing signs of renewed strength with notable advertisers.” Disney, Comcast, and Apple are among the major companies that have returned to advertising on X in the past year.
Increasing ad revenue, along with cutting costs and headcount, was a key focus for Yaccarino when she joined X in 2023. She joined from NBCUniversal, where she was president of global advertising and partnerships.
Sensor Tower further noted that despite the user decline, X is still 65% larger than Instagram Threads and 10 times larger than Bluesky when it comes to daily users. X users also spend significantly more time on the platform—31 minutes per day, according to ST, compared to eight minutes per day for Threads users.
Yaccarino announced he was leaving X on Wednesday morning, a day after Grok, X’s artificial intelligence model, went haywire and began posting anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler responses.
X’s valuation took a major hit in the two years after Musk purchased the platform for $44 billion in 2022, with Fidelity valuing the company at $12.32 billion late last year. However, its valuation returned to $44 billion earlier this year, just before it was acquired by XAI, Musk’s AI platform, in March.
Yaccarino, soon after joining the company, said it was committed to what Musk called a “free speech, not freedom of reach” approach, where the platform was less focused on censoring and booting users than under his previous leadership.
“X is allowing an independence of information that is uncomfortable for some people,” she said in 2023. “We are a platform that allows people to make their own decisions.”
Meanwhile, critics said X had become more toxic than ever under its more relaxed approach to censorship. Many users abandoned X after the 2024 election and moved to Bluesky, which some left-leaning users nicknamed “Blue Heaven,” in protest against Musk and his support for President Donald Trump.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who primarily covers Tesla, told TheWrap that Yaccarino “did a great job and was a key part of X’s foundation.” He added that she “will have tough shoes to fill.”
Another Wall Street analyst who spoke to TheWrap on Wednesday afternoon said it was “not a surprise” that Yaccarino decided to leave X. “She had a very difficult job from the beginning that was compounded by some of Elon’s actions to limit content moderation and harass advertisers,” they said.
Yaccarino, in her X Post announcing her departure Wednesday morning, said she is “immensely grateful” to Musk for “trusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech” during her time at the company.
“Thank you for your contributions,” Musk posted in response to Yaccarino, about 40 minutes after she announced her departure.
