X Doubled its Mobile Revenue Year Over Year
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Boring but Big. Check out the full article for more insights.
May was a strange month for X. On the one hand, revenue didn't grow from April - quite the opposite. On the other, it saw the return of its chief poster from his political journey.
But when looking at revenue beyond just a few months, an interesting trend emerges:
According to our App Intelligence, X ended May with $16.7M of net revenue (after fees) down from $18.4M in April. But when you compare May's haul to May of 2024 it's very different. Year-over-year revenue is actually up 120%!
X really transformed its revenue generation capabilities in 2024. Price increases were somewhat responsible for this increase but I don't think that's really the core of it. Instead, it was the platform's ability to surface interesting posts.
And as the year progressed, that diminished, at least in my stream. I don't think I'm the only one because Elon's return from DC also brought on an algorithm update, suggesting I'm not the only one who noticed.
By the way, I also considered the decrease in revenue to be the result of Bluesky taking off, but looking at the downloads I'm fairly certain that isn't the case. Bluesky's downloads have dropped from 2.7M in January to 370K in May, according to our estimates. That's a loss of more than 86%.
That may not have an immediate impact, but more relevant posts + Elon's fairly non-political return to the platform could drive more revenue as X cements itself as the go-to news source around the world.
App Intelligence for Everyone!
The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.
Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.
All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
