While Elon Musk continues to tout record-high usage and surging popularity for X (formerly Twitter), new data suggests that the platform’s financial performance is still lagging far behind. This could spell trouble for Musk’s ambitious social media experiment.
Over the weekend, The New York Times published an overview of X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s challenges in wooing advertisers back to the app. Among various insights into the difficulties of balancing Musk’s free speech stance with advertiser concerns, the report highlighted a crucial point: X is still struggling to achieve profitability.
Despite the claims of increased user engagement, the financial metrics tell a different story, indicating that the road to making X a profitable venture remains long and uncertain. Musk included a note:
“Internal documents obtained by The New York Times show that, in the second quarter of this year, X earned $114 million in revenue in the United States, a 25 percent decline from the first quarter and a 53 percent decline from the previous year. The company aims to reach $190 million in U.S. revenue during the third quarter, bolstered by advertising associated with the Olympics, football and political campaigns, the documents said — but that target would still set the company’s quarterly earnings at 25 percent less than they were last year.”