Tech influencers and popular YouTubers are considering leaving Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) and making Mark Zuckerberg's Threads their new home.
What Happened: Tech influencers and popular YouTubers are increasingly considering leaving X and moving to Threads full-time, as Musk's never-ending changes to the social media platform have unsettled some of the earliest adopters of X.
Some tech influencers, apart from YouTube, have traditionally used X to connect with their followers. This gives influencers direct access to their followers and also lets their followers interact directly with them.
However, Musk's unending changes to X and some of his unpopular decisions, like completely killing third-party apps, amping up advertisements, devaluing the blue checkmark, and other changes, have annoyed many of these tech influencers.
For instance, Michael Fisher, who is a popular tech YouTuber, has this to say: "I'm likely staying on X until it collapses, but I'm really enjoying having tech conversations on Threads as well."
MKBHD, like other tech influencers, joined X in its early days. While he hasn't said much about Meta Platforms Inc.'s
"Let's talk on Twitter about how broken Twitter is right now," he snarked. He also posted a "Dear Twitter" video on his YouTube channel, explaining how these changes are damaging the platform.
A social media journalist, Matt Navarra, has decided to stop using X and instead going "all-in" on Threads.
Apart from the chaos on X, Navarra says Threads is much better regarding interactions and reach.
His question about going "all-in" on Threads also attracted Zuckerberg's attention, which once again boosted Navarra's post and earned him hundreds of new followers.
Why It Matters: Under Musk, X has been undergoing changes at a breakneck speed, but change is only sometimes good.
Speaking at the Code 2023 conference in September, X CEO Linda Yaccarino revealed that the social media platform now has 225 million daily active users worldwide.
That is a decline of nearly 30 million users since November, according to data posted by Musk.
X has lost nearly 12% of its daily active users since Musk's acquisition.
While Threads is not doing all that great either, gaining tech influencers from X could attract people who tend to be power users.
Whether this will be enough to reduce the popularity of X or give Threads a lifeline, only time will tell. But for now, tech influencers are increasingly looking at Threads as a refuge from Musk's X.
