Honestly, it's hard to say what the state of play is today for Elon's Musk's "X" project, after mixed reports about its performance.

It's a year since Musk bought Twitter, rebranding it to X ever since, part of a long-held vision to create a payments-centric "everything app," modeled on the Chinese messaging applications, like WeChat, which have become vital connection tools for billions of users.

He does believe X can become the same, but again, at this point, it's not entirely clear how X is developing toward that split.

According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino's insights, all's going great so far, and her latest blog post claimed that:

X now has more than 500 million monthly active users
X's users spend an average of 7.8 billion active minutes on X per day
The average user spends more than 32 minutes per day in the app
More than 1.5 million accounts are being added daily
All major ad agencies have unraveled their pause guidance against advertising on X
90 of X's top 100 ad spenders from a year ago have now resumed campaigns
But as noted, many of these stats are refuted by third-party analysis, or even a basic dig into X's own reported numbers.

On active users: X's monthly active user count fell 14.8 percent across the globe and 17.8 percent in the U.S. year over year, Axios reports from data published this week by SimilarWeb, for the month of September.

Last September, X had around 238 million daily active users, which probably means X must have served around 439 million monthly actives, based on average DAU to MAU variation across social apps. That would mean that, according to SimilarWeb's indicators, X would already be seeing around 378 million monthly active users, not 500 million, which X claims.

Other third-party analysis similarly tells the same story. Data by Apptopia suggests that X has around 223 million monthly actives and 121 million daily users as of the app witnessed a drastic decline in both usage and downloads since the rebrand to X in July.

However, neither of them can access the complete data insights; X has complete oversight. Even though their figures are usually only indicative, suggesting that probably X did not reach 500 million monthly users at this stage.

But we don't know this, because X is now a private company, and as such, it's not beholden to the SEC rules around disclosure. So we only have X's word, and X says it's 500 million.

Make of that what you will.

Second, average time spent in the app per day: X itself has reported that it currently has 253 million daily actives, which would mean that if users were spending a total of 7.8 billion minutes per day in the app, as Yaccarino reports, then average time spent in the app is actually 30.8 minutes per user, not 32 minutes per day as Yaccarino claims.
If the average time spent per user was indeed 32 minutes a day, as X claims, that would mean that X is now serving 244 million daily actives, which means it has lost 7 million DAU since March.

And if that's true, then how on earth are the app's 1.5 million new account sign-ups sticking? X should be adding 45 million new users monthly at that rate.

But it's losing daily actives? Does not seem like a great indicator of success.

X also says that all of its major ad partners are returning, but Ebiquity, which works with 70 of the world's top 100 spending brands, reports that only two of its clients have restarted X ad spend. X has also started selling ad inventory directly through Google Ads to fill slots, which would indicate that if these brands are returning, it appears they are spending a lot less.

But again we don't know, because X is the only one with all that data, and the only means of knowing for sure how X is going to do is its financial performance. Which will also remain unclear, till Musk and Co. decide to report those figures.

And that might only occur when X is very much suffering badly, though it does seem a little bit telling of a problem when the banks that lent Elon Musk $13 billion to buy this company are now dreading the whole situation, as they try to sell the debt.

Fidelity, an investor in the firm, has diluted X by two-thirds, a value that would sit at a present worth of close to $15 million compared to what Musk paid for the platform in its entirety to the tune of $44 billion.

So while X's team is talking up the rosy glow, every outside analysis suggests the opposite. And maybe they're all wrong, but it does feel like there's something off about the nose with the data that's being released.

On other areas, Yaccarino also claims that daily, "150,000 new long form posts are published, receiving more than 3 billion impressions."

Long-form content is a far cry from the Twitter of old, which hasn't really seemed like a great fit, but perhaps there is an audience for it, based on these figures. Again, the detail is lacking, as for what actually defines a long-form post in this sense-the conceptualization of a long-form post means some ambiguity in definitions, after all, is any post that you need to tap into to read, or is it only posts of a certain word count?.

That average X Premium subscriber spends three times longer on the platform than a nonsubscriber. Zero surprise at all, but that would also mean that this segment would skew the average time spent numbers, on aggregate.

Regarding new features, Yaccarino mentioned that full-screen, vertical video ads will soon be shown within X's new immersive playback mode-this being when you tap through on a video and scroll up to keep seeing more. According to Yaccarino, 100 million people now view video content within this dedicated feed every day, with Gen Z being the most active consumers of this process.

Finally, Yaccarino says that its in-stream payments process is in development, with X being granted money transmitter licenses in several U.S. states. As we’ve reported, X has been granted payments licenses in some states, but it still has a long way to go in gaining full approval on this front.

I don't know, it kinda feels almost too skeptical to question every one of X's claims, but again, this is based on external analysis and reporting at a broad scale, which is contrasted by Yaccarino's different notes. Perhaps they are all wrong, perhaps X is really doing great, and perhaps Threads, now up to 100 million users, is having no effect at all on X usage.

But that would be pretty unlikely, when all the other methods of analysis and vision are turning up the same.

We shall see, as X continues on its way.