Impact in the zeitgeist. Twitter was everywhere. Regularly referenced on live news television statins. Was considered a major news source. Shows had segments dedicated to it. Everyone and every brand had a Twitter. That is not the case today. Not by a long shot.
Not an easy thing to gauge. X/Twitter stopped publishing MAUs after the acquisition.
External estimates vary, some point to growth, some to stagnation. We know that revenue suffered. LOTS of partisan and emotional opinions for either.
Google trends does paint a bleak picture for X but I am also questioning how much google itself can gauge that after LLMs exploded in popularity.
Anecdotally I did notice that references and embeds to X are way less prominent and common than before. My usual news used to be filled with them. My consumption of the platform also plummeted after not being able to read threads when not logged, its much harder for me to get drawn into it.
Still without data, I would be surprised if the changes to verification and logged out access did not massively hurt new adoption. With tiktoks prevalence amongst a new generation I would bet its a matter of time before X gets grouped to tumbler/facebook, not dead, but way past its peak and cultural relevance. If that has not already happened.
Anecdata: Mastodon now has witty, un-earnest comments semi-regularly. And I have learned of maybe ten percent of breaking news things in the last three months on Mastodon via links that weren’t just to twitter.
