Now, look at this:
According to X News DailyX is currently developing further improvements to its account analytics tools, which will provide insight into when your audience is active within the app, helping you plan the best approach to posts, engagement and more.
This is a feature that has been available in various third-party Twitter/X tools for years and has proven to be effective, but for one reason or another, both Twitter and X have resisted adding such enhancements, instead only offering basic analytics features to aid in account management.
Not long ago, X rolled out advanced analytics features for its X Premium subscribers to give them more tools for managing their accounts.
This is a big improvement, but it's taken too long, and at times it's really painful to see a platform so blatantly shooting itself in the foot with these elements.
In fact, every time I, or any journalist, write a critical piece about Elon Musk or X, the replies are met with abuse and ridicule, accusations of hating “free speech”, hating right-wing politics, working for the establishment, etc.
This is completely ridiculous. I personally don't care about Elon Musk's political leanings. If he's in a position to pay $44 billion for a social media app, he can do whatever he wants.
My problem, like many other social media analysts, is that I know what he's doing won't work, based on years of experience watching others try similar ideas. We know it will fail, and we've pointed that out repeatedly, but any criticism, no matter how valid it later proves to be, will be misconstrued through the prism of political activism because of the public stance Musk has ostensibly chosen.
Case in point: In November 2022, one month after Musk took ownership of Twitter, I wrote an article outlining the various ways Twitter could make money from subscriptions that don't involve selling blue checkmarks. This is clearly a bad decision that would only undermine the value of the very product it's selling.
According to the post:
“A range of third-party tools include in-depth competitive analysis and performance tracking features that you won't get from Twitter itself, while management platforms like Hootsuite offer: It has 200,000 paying subscribers and is primarily used for scheduling tweets.”
And lo and behold, 18 months later, X has finally updated their analytics tools to include the exact same functionality that is available within these third-party tools. This is huge value to marketers, and they will pay to have access to it directly from X.
The only problem is that many marketers have abandoned X as the right platform for their business.
X's advertising revenue is still reported to be down by about 50%, and X Of the brands that paused in-app ad spending due to concerns over Elon Musk's management, 60% have now returned, most of whom are not spending as much as they did before.
Essentially, X is less attractive to brands than Twitter once was, and the platform's reputation has been significantly damaged by ongoing controversy as a result of Musk's unapologetically aggressive approach on all fronts.
So while X has seen the light and is adding features that are more useful for brands, it may be too little, too late, and most brands are at least a little hesitant to incorporate them into their apps.
So this is a good move and a good update that will have great value for a lot of brands, but it depends on how many brands are actually interested at this stage.
