Whether you call it X or Twitter (as you’ll see in stat #21, many people still do), there’s no question that this particular social platform is in a period of significant change. As you’ll see in stat 24, that has some brands questioning the platform’s ROI.
But advertiser numbers that dropped off a year and a half ago are picking back up again, as are ad revenues. For brands with an active audience on X, there’s real opportunity to connect and build community.
So: Is that your brand? This collection of X statistics can help you figure that out. Use these latest insights into current audience details, usage patterns, and benchmarks to inform your X marketing strategy for 2025.
What the data tells us (TL;DR)
- Gen Z is X’s biggest generational group, growing 12% since 2022. The segment also drove a 6.9% brand equity jump in Q3 2024. This means brands on X can target young people with entertaining content in a space less saturated by brand competitors.
- X users watched 8.3 billion videos daily in 2024, a 40% YoY increase, as the platform pushes a TikTok-like experience with its new video tab. Yet, only 5.5% of marketers use X for influencer campaigns, far behind TikTok (58.9%) and Instagram (35.2%). This gap presents an opportunity for early adopters to leverage video and influencer partnerships on X at potentially lower costs in a less saturated market.
- X accounts average 61 posts/week, with impressions up to 2,121 per post in 2024. Posting at 6 a.m. Monday leverages peak engagement for better reach.
General X (Twitter) stats
1. X has 611 million monthly active users
That makes it the 12th most popular social media platform in the world, ranking behind the Chinese platforms Douyin and Kuaishou, but ahead of Pinterest.
2. X is the 10th most popular social platform in the United States
In the U.S, the platform ranks just behind Reddit. For context, Pew Research Center found that 21% of Americans say they ever use X, compared to 70% for Facebook and 50% for Instagram.
Source: Pew Research Center
3. The most followed X account is @ElonMusk
As of this writing, Musk has 219 million followers. Barack Obama is in second place with 130.7 million.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna round out the top 5.
4. eMarketer predicts X will lose 10 million users worldwide in 2025
And another 10 million in 2026. Within the United States, they expect the number of users to drop 3.8% in 2025 and another 3.5% in 2026.
Source: eMarketer
That said…
5. There were 137,136,000 unique U.S. visitors to X in October 2024
Which is actually slightly higher than the number a year earlier. U.S. visitors to the platform varied between 135,736 and 146,674 per month over the preceding 12 months, but never took an ongoing downturn.
Source: eMarketer
These two X (Twitter) statistics combined suggest that predictions about X’s future are rather tricky at the moment. Smart marketers will keep an eye on their metrics in X (Twitter) analytics and put a social listening strategy in place to track the volume and context of relevant conversations on this evolving social network.
6. X.com is the fifth-most visited website worldwide
It ranks behind Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. But the average visit to the X website is 00:12:40, longer than any of those sites except YouTube (00:20:43)
X benchmarks for marketers
7. The average organic X engagement rate is 1.7% for the entertainment and media industry
That’s the highest rate among all available industries tracked in the latest original data from Hootsuite and Critical Truth. The lowest engagement rate by industry is 0.9%, which is the rate for consumer goods retail, marketing agencies, and real estate.
The overall engagement rate is 1.6%.
Not sure what your average engagement rate is? Find out with our free engagement rate calculator, or try Hootsuite and let it crunch your numbers and tell you how to improve — automatically.
8. The overall weekly follower growth rate on X is 0.11%
In the chart below, this looks like a dramatically lower rate than TikTok and Instagram. But keep in mind that in Q4 2024, there was significant uncertainty and media attention about the future of TikTok. This clearly impacted the follower count numbers for both TikTok and Instagram. Their third quarter growth numbers are a more realistic comparison.
9. The average weekly posting frequency on X is 61
That is significantly higher than on any other platform. This reflects the nature of X as a primarily text-based platform with a low character count.
10. The optimum number of posts per week for minimum engagement is 6
Overall engagement is fairly consistent, though, from 2 to 9 posts (aka Tweets) and then starts to drop off from there.
11. The average number of impressions per X post is 2121.13
That’s a significant increase from 1206.55 in 2023. So is that a big deal? We’ve got a detailed blog post breaking down the importance of impressions (and reach) to help you understand what impressions mean for your ROI.
Source: Statista
X audience demographic stats
12. There are 106.23 million X users in the United States
That makes the U.S. the country with the largest X user base. It’s followed by Japan (69.28 million) and India (25.45 million).
Source: Statista
13. 38% of U.S. adults aged 18-29 use X
It’s easy to assume that Gen Z only cares about TikTok, but they’re by far the largest generation on X. In fact, X internal data shows a 12% increase in Gen Z users from 2022 to 2024.
The next-largest group of users is 30- to 49-year-olds. 25% of Americans in that age group use X.
14. X saw a 6.9% quarterly increase of brand equity among Gen z users in Q3 2024
That put the platform at the top of the Ad Age-Harris poll rankings Gen Z poll released in November 2024.
Source: AdAge via XBusiness
15. 25% of American men use X, but only 17% of women
This indicates that marketers specifically targeting a male audience may wish to invest more effort in the platform. By contrast, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok all have more female users than male.
16. 27% of Americans who make $100,000 per year or more use X
That’s the largest percentage of any income group. Still, it pales in comparison to the 70% of Americans in this income category who use Facebook and 58% who use Instagram.
X use is not hugely varied across income categories. Between 15 and 24% of Americans in all income categories under $99,999 also use the platform.
17. 27% of Americans who have a college degree use X
That’s more than double the usage of those with high school or less, 13% of whom use the platform.
18. 23% of Americans who live in the suburbs use X
Along with 22% of those who live in cities. Only 15% of rural Americans use the platform.
X usage statistics
19. In total, people spent 364 billion active seconds per day on X in 2024
That’s six billion minutes, an increase of 10% from 2023. They also watched 8.3 billion videos every day on X in 2024, a 40% year-over-year increase. If you’re not yet posting videos on X, it’s worth testing this increasingly popular type of content.
20. 81% of U.S. X users use the platform because it’s entertaining
You may be surprised to learn that’s the top reason people say they use the platform. Getting news is the second reason (65%), followed by connecting with others who share similar interests (62%).
Source: Pew Research Center
21. 55% of daily American X users still refer to the platform as Twitter
As do 49% of all American adults. Only 19% of daily active users in the U.S. refer to the platform as X, while 21% use both names interchangeably.
Source: YouGov
In the United Kingdom, even more people still use the old name: 80% of all UK users and 78% of daily UK users say they refer to the platform only as Twitter.
The rebranding appears to still be a work in progress. It’s a tricky linguistic road to navigate, which is why we still often include the original name when we talk about the platform.
22. The top emoji used on X in 2024 was the loudly crying face, posted 2.1 billion times
The face with tears of joy ranked third, with 1.5 billion posts. Whether the tears were happy or sad, people did not hesitate to share them on X.
23. The top topic on X in 2024 was sports
That was followed by movies & TV, politics, technology, and music. The conversation about the Super Bowl alone drove 13 million posts, 4.5 billion impressions, and 511 million video views, much of it happening in real time.
X for business stats
24. Only 38% of social marketers are confident they get positive ROI from X
And that’s for those who use social listening. Among marketers without a social listening plan in place, only 27% are confident in the platform’s ROI.
Source: Hootsuite
25. The best time to post on X is 6 a.m. Monday
Tuesday between 3 and 6 a.m. is also a high-engagement time on the platform, as is Sunday around midnight.
This is an overall finding across industries. You can find the best times to post for your industry in Hootsuite Analytics, and for your specific account using Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature.
26. 29% of American X users use the platform to look at product reviews or recommendations
This is a smaller percentage than on other major social platforms, but it is nonetheless significant – more than a quarter of U.S users are researching products on X. If you haven’t already, it’s worth developing a plan to include X in your ecommerce strategy.
X advertising stats
27. X will account for 0.2% of digital ad spend in 2025
That’s according to eMarketer forecasts. It sounds miniscule, but remember that this is the percentage of all digital ad spend, not just social media ads. For context, Facebook will account for 14.6% of total digital ad spend.
28. 5.5% of marketers use X for influencer campaigns
This text-forward platform is just not as conducive to promoting influencer partnerships. For comparison, 58.9% of marketers use TikTok for influencer marketing and 35.2% use Instagram.
That said, the smaller number of influencer campaigns on the platform creates a unique opportunity for brands whose audience is active on the platform.
29. X advertising revenue increased 123% y-o-y in December 2024
That’s partly based on a return to ads on the platform by major brands like Apple and Amazon, which paused their advertising campaigns on the platform about a year and a half ago.
30. There were more than 1.7 million ad campaigns on X in 2024
Those campaigns were created by more than 250,000 advertisers globally. Want to join them? We’ve got a blog post with everything you need to know about advertising on X.
How to use X stats to inform your strategy
1. Reconsider your picture of who uses the platform
Would you have expected Gen Z to be the biggest X user base? Or for X to have topped a brand equity survey among this age group?
It’s easy for brands with a young target audience to focus on TikTok and/or Instagram. But your audience is likely also on X, and your niche may not be as saturated on this platform.
2. Get motivated to dive into your X analytics
Marketers are uncertain about X ROI. But opportunities exist to drive conversions from X, with 29% of American users looking for product reviews and recommendations on the platform.
Becoming more confident in your ability to convert your X efforts into real business KPIs requires you to spend some time with your X analytics. Look at what types of content are already working for you, and do some testing to try to improve your results.
As you develop your content strategy, remember that people primarily use the platform for entertainment. Test tweets that explicitly promote your products or services, but don’t overdo it.
And remember that direct conversions are not the only social actions that contribute to ROI. A tool like Hootsuite Advanced Analytics can help you understand the ROI of X metrics at all stages of the customer journey.
3. Consider adding video to your X content strategy
The number of video views increased 40% last year. In January, X launched a dedicated video tab for U.S. users. This new home for fullscreen video aims to create a user experience similar to TikTok or Reels.
There may be opportunity here for brands that are early to engage with this new focus on video. It’s also worth examining how this impacts the ability to work with influencers on the platform. Since only 5.5% of marketers are currently using X for influencer partnerships, there’s a chance to try this strategy in an unsaturated marketplace where the upfront investment may be lower.
Build a smart X marketing strategy by using Hootsuite to plan, schedule, and publish Tweets, engage with users, and track topics and hashtags. Combined with powerful Twitter analytics, Hootsuite is your perfect partner for success on the platform and all other networks.
