Actually, it’s arduous to work out what X is making an attempt to realize by sharing obscure, non-contextualized efficiency figures, lots of that are tracked in seconds, outdoors of making an attempt to dupe folks with ridiculously excessive surface-level figures.
X has rapidly established a monitor file for amplifying deceptive information factors, which X CEO Linda Yaccarino is seemingly carrying into 2025, based mostly on her newest perception:
Here is a stat that blows my thoughts: Customers spent 364 billion seconds on X final 12 months. That is 11,500 years collectively ????????
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 14, 2025
As you possibly can see, Yaccarino has shared that X customers, cumulatively, spent 364 billion seconds within the app in 2024. Which, as Yaccarino notes, equates to 11,500 years in collective time spent.
The context lacking right here is that that is (presumably) 364 billion seconds per day within the app, not in whole for the 12 months, which is a crucial distinction, as 364 billion person seconds in whole would solely equate to 0.07 minutes spent within the app, per person, per day.
Which is de facto not good.
What Yaccarino meant to notice is that X now sees 364 billion energetic person seconds day-after-day, a stat that it had beforehand shared in its 2024 overview.
Which sounds spectacular, however 364 billion whole energetic person seconds per day, when divided by X’s reported 250 million day by day actives, additional equates to round 24 minutes per person, per day.
Which remains to be quite a bit, although it’s not as a lot as X claimed again in March, when it mentioned that customers are spending half-hour per day within the app, on common.
It’s additionally decrease than the 8 billion cumulative energetic person minutes per day, on common, which it additionally reported in March, which equates to 480 billion day by day person seconds.
The info then truly means that X both noticed a big drop-off in utilization all year long (round 6 minutes per person per day), or that its personal reported stats are conflicted.
Additional, at 24 minutes per person, per day, that’s lower than Twitter was seeing earlier than Elon Musk took over that the app, which, at one time, reported that customers had been spending 38 minutes per day within the app.
In fact, with out the complete context, we are able to’t know for certain what Yaccarino is reporting, and X, once more, is notoriously not clear with its information and figures.
However basically, what Yaccarino is touting as an achievement is seemingly by no means, and if something, it reveals that X noticed extra of its customers spending much less time within the app because the 12 months went on.
We don’t know, in fact, as a result of X is a personal firm, and due to this fact doesn’t have to supply official information on utilization. However its personal numbers recommend this, irrespective of how X tries to re-frame them.
That’s to not say that X is failing, neither is it a criticism of X, or Elon, or free speech, or the human race, or no matter else Elon’s followers wish to placed on me for highlighting a reporting anomaly.
That is extra a observe on X’s chaotic reporting, and the shortage of correct, constant information from the platform, or a full clarification of what such information represents.
It might be that completely different reporting methodologies are being utilized at completely different occasions, and that would clarify the variance, and it could possibly be that X is seeing an increase in energetic utilization amongst a smaller variety of energetic customers.
However the level right here is that the framing is necessary. And a billion of seconds sounds far more spectacular than what it truly represents.
