If you’re a regular reader of Social Media Today, then you’ve no doubt read my rantings on this before, and it’s not really news, as such, but more of a peeve that continues to fester over time.
In any event, the team at X continues to amplify random claims that “X is the number one news app in France,” “X is the #1 news app in Brazil,” “The most downloaded news app in Australia,” etc.
And these claims are true, X is the most downloaded “News” app on iOS, in many, many regions. But that’s actually due to creative categorization of the app, and is not necessarily a reflection of how valuable it is as a news resource.
X re-categorized itself as a “News” app back in 2016, after several quarters of slowing growth, while Facebook and Instagram were booming. The comparison between Facebook and Twitter continually hurt Twitter’s market perception, so the Twitter team came up with a genius plan to reduce the negative measurement against Meta’s apps: Switch Twitter’s categorization to the “News” category in the App Store instead, shifting it out of the “Social Media” segment.
Twitter does have a lot of news content, and a lot of news publishers posting to it. It’s kind of a news app. Right?
And that’s also true. According to Pew Research, many X users do use the app for news content, more so than other social apps:
So it could loosely be defined as a “News” app, and not a social media app, a category where it continues to lag, and would be ranked in the mid-40s for overall downloads most of the time.
No, no, X is actually a “News” app, because that looks much better, even if it’s not an entirely accurate reflection of the app’s content, usage, popularity, etc.
Creative categorization, to influence market perception. And now, the X team continues to use this as an indicator of the app’s enduring popularity, despite negative press coverage, despite criticism of Elon’s vision, and despite regional opposition to Elon Musk or X or Tesla or whatever else.
Case in point: In the above post, X CEO Linda Yaccarino is celebrating that X is the top news app in France this week. This is seemingly despite Elon Musk potentially insulting French leader Emmanuel Macron by making a joke about how he got a black eye last week.
So this shows that X, as an alternative news source, is loved by the people, in spite of “mainstream” media lies about negative perception. Right?
Well, no, because as you can see in this chart from Sensor Tower, X is always the number one news app in France.
Sure, it might drop to number 2 occasionally, but X leads the way in News apps on iOS overall, because it has a huge advantage over other, actual news apps.
That being that X is not a news app, at least not in the same way as the others listed in the same category.
For context, these are the top 12 news apps on iOS in France right now:
Yeah, I’m not sure that these apps would be considered rivals to X. Most of them would be lucky to have a million or so active users, while X has over 17 million monthly active users in France.
You’ll note also that X can only ever promote that it’s the number one News app on iOS, because it’s actually not allowed to categorize itself as a News app on Android.
Why?
“If apps contain primarily user-generated content (for example, social media apps), they should not declare themselves as News apps, and are not considered to be News apps.”
So because X is all user-generated content, with no officially provided editorial content of its own, it’s not possible to re-categorize the app on Android as well.
In summary, X continues to share misleading info to re-frame itself as a leader in the space, while the actual, auditable data that it produces shows that it’s losing users.
Indeed, according to X’s most recent DSA report, the app is down 15% on overall European usage since Elon Musk took over at the app.
X is not the number one news app, it’s not the number one social media app, and it’s really just a middle-ground platform with limited audience potential for most.
