Twitter MAUs Set to Grow Just 1.5 Percent This Year

Elon Musk has his work cut out for him as he takes the reigns at Twitter. Worldwide user growth will be essentially flat this year, according to Insider Intelligence study completed before Twitter accepted Musk’s offer to purchase the platform. Usage will grow at a similar rate of just over 1% each year through the end of 2026. And in the US, usage will actually decline over the next few years.

By the end of 2022, there will be 368.06 million monthly Twitter users worldwide, up just 1.5% from 2021. This comes after a pandemic-induced bump in 2020 and 2021 when growth was 11.2% and 4.3% respectively when users flocked to Twitter for information. Going forward, Twitter will add just 20.78 million users between now and the end of 2026, far below Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

“Growing Twitter won’t be an easy task,“ said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “While we now have a better idea of how Musk intends to increase usage of the platform - subscriptions, payments, and a mysterious business X - the goals he has set are lofty and signify a potentially major shift in how Twitter is used. “

Most of Twitter’s growth will come from APAC, while growth in the US is turning negative for the first time since 2018. In 2022, the number of US monthly users will drop by 0.5% to 57.5 million. Growth will be slightly negative for the next three years, with the platform losing nearly 1 million US users by the end of 2026.

“Charging a subscription to use Twitter may be a tough sell, especially if there continues to be a free version of Twitter available,“ Enberg said. “Musk knows this - while he’s expecting to cut ad revenues to less than half of Twitter’s total revenues by 2028, subscriptions will still account for about $2 billion less. Musk’s proposal for a payments business means that he’s also getting serious about commerce, which is still a relatively untapped and potentially large opportunity for Twitter.“

Twitter’s UK user base is much smaller than that of the US, with 14.2 million users this year. Unlike in the US, growth will be positive, but to a small degree. Usage will grow just over 1% per year through the end of 2026, with the platform adding 680,000 users in the UK by then.