Truthfully, it’s arduous to work out what X is attempting to realize by sharing obscure, non-contextualized efficiency figures, lots of that are tracked in seconds, outdoors of attempting to dupe individuals with ridiculously excessive surface-level figures.
X has shortly established a monitor document for amplifying deceptive information factors, which X CEO Linda Yaccarino is outwardly carrying into 2025, primarily based on her newest perception:
This is a stat that blows my thoughts: Customers spent 364 billion seconds on X final yr. That is 11,500 years collectively ????????
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 14, 2025
As you’ll be able to 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 yr, 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 lively person seconds day-after-day, a stat that it had beforehand shared in its 2024 overview.
Which sounds spectacular, however 364 billion whole lively 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 continues to be so much, 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 lively person minutes per day, on common, which it additionally reported in March, which equates to 480 billion day by day person seconds.
The information then really means that X both noticed a major 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 total context, we will’t know for positive what Yaccarino is reporting, and X, once more, is notoriously not clear with its information and figures.
However primarily, what Yaccarino is touting as an achievement is seemingly under no circumstances, and if something, it reveals that X noticed extra of its customers spending much less time within the app because the yr went on.
We don’t know, after all, as a result of X is a non-public firm, and due to this fact doesn’t have to offer official information on utilization. However its personal numbers counsel this, regardless 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 dearth of correct, constant information from the platform, or a full rationalization of what such information represents.
It could be that totally different reporting methodologies are being utilized at totally different occasions, and that might clarify the variance, and it may very well be that X is seeing an increase in lively utilization amongst a smaller variety of lively customers.
However the level right here is that the framing is necessary. And a billion of seconds sounds way more spectacular than what it really represents.
