X’s descent into hell: Reddit overtakes Elon Musk’s social network in popularity

It was never the most financially prosperous social network, but Twitter (now X) was for many years a key platform in ecosystem 2.0 and few dared to turn their backs on a channel where conversations about the hottest current topics took place in real time. Things began to go wrong, however, for the little bird’s social network in October 2022, when South African billionaire Elon Musk decided to tie up Twitter for a whopping $44 billion.

When Musk took charge of Twitter, he made severe cuts that were particularly noticeable in the social network’s content moderation team.where content of a questionable nature began to emerge to the surface that ultimately ended up scaring away a good number of advertisers.

After the victory of Donald Trump in the last presidential elections in the United States, where the support sought by Elon Musk for the Republican candidate through X would have been absolutely decisive in the success at the polls of the elected president of the North American country, many made known their discomfort with a social network that they barely recognized, fleeing en masse to Blueskywhose number of users has skyrocketed over the last three weeks.

However, Bluesky is not the only social network that is benefiting from the sharp drop in popularity of X. And according to Ofcom, the body that regulates communications in the United Kingdom, Reddit has overtaken X as the fifth most popular social network in the UK.

According to the figures considered by Ofcom, Reddita platform where users publish content in discussion threads within communities that respond to different topics, It was visited by 22.9 million adults in May 2024, compared to the 22.1 million people who visited X in the same period of time.

The latest updates to Google’s algorithm would have benefited Reddit

These data make Reddit the social network that has grown most strongly in recent months in the United Kingdomeither. This platform, not in vain, saw a jump of 47% in May 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year.

Reddit is currently the fifth most popular social network in the UK ahead of LinkedIn and X. The list of the most popular 2.0 platforms in British soil is currently led by YouTube, which attracted visits from more than 44 million adults in May of this year.

The fact that Reddit has gained positions within the social media galaxy in recent months would be due not only to X’s fall from grace but also to the updates implemented by Google to its search engine earlier this year (some updates that would have been clearly favorable to that platform).

The latest update to Google’s algorithm, which was carried out during the first half of the year, has considerably boosted Reddit from the point of view of traffic generated by organic searches on the internetargue some experts.

In addition, at the end of last year there were a series of changes in the third-party apps compatible with Reddit and such changes would have ultimately given wings to the traffic generated by the website of this platform.

It is worth noting, on the other hand, that Between May 2023 and May 2024, X’s reach has suffered a prolapse of 8%. Even though there are many alternatives to And although the popularity of Bluesky has risen in recent weeks, it is unknown whether the more than 10 million users that this platform has gained in recent weeks will continue to be loyal to this social network in the coming months.