(Reuters) – Twitter Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk said new user signups for the social media platform are at an “all-time high” as he battles advertisers and users fleeing to other platforms due to concerns about verification and hate. speech
Musk said in a tweet late Saturday that the past seven days through Nov. 16 averaged more than two million registrations per day, a 66% increase compared to the same week in 2021.
In the past seven days through Nov. 15, user active minutes averaged a record high of 8 billion active minutes per day, a 30% increase compared to the same week last year, he said.
Compared to October of last year, hate speech impersonation has decreased as of November 13.
According to Musk, impersonations on the platform increased earlier this month before and after the launch of Twitter Blue.
Musk, who also runs rocket company SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling company Boring, said buying Twitter would accelerate his ambition to create an “everything app” called X.
Musk’s “Twitter 2.0 The Everything App” will include features such as encrypted direct messages (TMs), longform tweets and payments, the tweet says.
In another tweet early Sunday, Musk said, “Twitter’s path to surpassing one billion monthly users in 12 to 18 months.”
Advertisers on Twitter, including giants such as General Motors, Mondelez International and Volkswagen AG, have suspended ads on the platform as they battle the new boss.
Musk said Twitter was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” from the advertiser pushback, blaming a coalition of civil rights groups that have been pressuring the platform’s top advertisers to take action if content ratings are not protected.
Activists are urging Twitter’s advertisers to release statements about pulling their ads from the social media platform after Musk lifted a ban on former US President Donald Trump’s tweets.
Hundreds of Twitter employees are believed to have left the besieged company, following Musk’s ultimatum that employees must log “long hours at high intensity” or leave.
The company laid off half of its workforce in November, wiping out teams responsible for communications, content control, human rights and machine learning ethics, as well as some product and engineering teams.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Gogle)
