According to data from the website, Threads and Bluesky still have a long way to go to catch up with X in the US The latest report from the Pew Research Center released this week.
The research firm first asked about these smaller services and found that each is used by just under 1 in 10 American adults.
While X isn't one of the largest social networks in the U.S., it's still one to beat in the smaller market of social media apps that focus on short, real-time text posts displayed in a vertical feed.
Competition in the space has increased since Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X in October 2022, as Musk's changes to the platform's content moderation policies and the site's political shift to the right have prompted some users to look for alternatives.
In addition to the growth seen in open source decentralized networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, other startups have launched potential Twitter rivals like Spill, Post, T2 (Pebble), and Hive. However, many of them have already been closed.
Pew data shows how strong X's position in the market remains.
The report shows that even Meta, with all its resources and platform power, has not yet been able to defeat X with its competitor, Threads.
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According to Pew, 21% of U.S. adults said they used X, compared to just 8% who used Threads and 4% who used Bluesky. Meanwhile, Truth Social attracted 3% of U.S. adults.
The report found that despite this competition, X has not seen a major decline in usage over the years. For example, Pew's report on adult social media in the US published early last year found that X was used by 22% of American adults at the time. His The 2021 report is shown Twitter (before rebranding to X) was used by 23% of US adults.
In other words, if X is decreasing, it is a long and slow decline.
This year's report also shows that YouTube and Facebook continue to be the platforms most frequently used by U.S. adults, with 84% and 71%, respectively, saying they have used them.
Meanwhile, 50% of U.S. adults said they use Instagram, 37% use TikTok, 32% use WhatsApp, 26% use Reddit, and 25% use Snapchat.
Pew noted that many of these services have grown in popularity over time. TikTok is up from 21% in 2021, and Instagram, which is now used by half of U.S. adults, is up from 40% in 2021. About a third of adults now use WhatsApp, up from 23% in 2021.
Reddit, which has become the darling of the AI era thanks to its numerous content licensing deals, was used by just 18% of US adults in 2021 compared to 26% today.
Of course, all these numbers look completely different than in the US teenagers' use of social mediawhere YouTube remains number 1, but is followed by another set of the most popular apps including TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
