Pew’s latest social media report shows X’s staying power in the U.S., despite competition

X is still used by 21% of U.S. adults, Pew found, only down from 23% in 2021, despite increased competition from Meta, startups, and decentralized social media.

Threads and Bluesky still have quite a way to go to catch up with X in the U.S., according to data from Pew Research Center’s latest report released this week.

The research firm asked about these smaller services for the first time and found they’re each used by just under 1 in 10 U.S. adults or fewer.

While X is not one of the largest social networks in the U.S., it’s still the one to beat within the smaller market of social apps that focus on short, real-time text posts that appear in a vertical feed.

This space has seen increased competition since Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X in October 2022, as Musk’s changes to the platform’s content moderation policies and the site’s rightward political shift sent some users looking for alternatives.

In addition to the growth seen by decentralized, open source networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, other startups launched would-be Twitter rivals like Spill, Post, T2 (Pebble), and Hive. Many of these have since shut down, however.

Pew’s data indicates how hard X’s grip on the market remains.

Even Meta, with all its resources and platform power, hasn’t yet been able to beat X with its competitor, Threads, the report found.