Over the weekend, X experienced significant activity following an attempted assassination targeting former President Donald Trump, sparking extensive discussions within the platform.
Today, X's owner Elon Musk announced that the platform has achieved a new 'record high' in usage.
𝕏 usage hit another all-time high yesterday with 417 billion user-seconds globally!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024
In the US, user-seconds reached 93B, 23% higher than the previous record of 76B.
In a single day.
X recorded a total of '417 billion user-seconds globally' in a single day, translating to an average of 27.8 minutes per user among its 250 million daily active users.
In March, the social media platform claimed that users were spending an average of 30 minutes per day on the platform.
You’re absolutely right @XNews. 250 million people use X every day. 550 million people visit the global town square every month.
— Data (@XData) March 18, 2024
On average, users spend 30 minutes a day on X. https://t.co/RoEX4RzIxL pic.twitter.com/L9mkoWll44
Elon Musk's assertion of 93 billion user seconds in the U.S. alone translates to an average of 15.5 minutes per user, based on an assumed 100 million U.S. users (as previously claimed by X). This average per-person usage, however, isn't particularly high. When considering these figures in context, it's challenging to gauge their significance without more context on how cumulative user seconds translate into reach and impact among X users.
One plausible inference is that X may be reaching fewer individuals, prompting the shift towards reporting cumulative seconds. Nevertheless, X remains a crucial platform for real-time breaking news events, especially in contrast to Meta's Twitter-like Threads app, which avoids such content.