Where Have All the Cowboys Gone

Yesterday, NBC News reported that X has hemorrhaged users since Elon Musk the company formerly known as Twitter. Frankly, this shouldn't be all the surprising since the site practically turned into a bot-infested hellscape.

While the NBC News story focused on X, I think there's a bigger issue worth exploring. As Paula Cole asked in 1997, "Where have all the cowboys gone?" Of course, in this case, cowboys refer to social media users. I guess you have to be of a certain age to get the reference.

Moving on, the report's data looked pretty grim across all apps tracked. In fact, Snapchat was the only app that showed periods of growth since November 2022. Each of the major social players — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (Twitter) — experienced user declines.

One explanation is that there are many new kids on the block. Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack Notes (ok, just kidding, no one uses Substack Notes) all popped up after Musk's Twitter desiccation. But, according to the NBC News article, those services aren't doing so hot either.

Threads, a competitor launched by Instagram and its parent company, Meta, had 1.6 million daily active U.S. mobile users in February, according to Sensor Tower, and 14 million worldwide. [...] Another X competitor, Bluesky, was even smaller, with 195,000 U.S. daily active mobile users in February, according to the research firm.

14 million daily active users isn't exactly the global hive of cultural activity that Twitter once commanded. So, again, I defer to Paula Cole: where has everyone gone?

From my own anecdotal evidence, everything seems to be losing users. Once active Discord communities I'm part of have turned into a trickle of updates. Mastodon, while my preferred social network, is still perceived as too complicated to connect with. Hell, Threads just turned on federation support (which is a big freaking deal), and it didn't even make many waves on either platform.

I think we're entering a post-social media world. There won't be another Twitter-like hub of cultural clout and information. TikTok seemed poised to potentially take the reins at one point, but it, too, is experiencing a "period of negative growth."

It's probably a good thing that a single corporate-owned platform is no longer the gathering place for the entirety of human connection. And it is definitely a good thing that we're slowly starting to break away from algorithmically controlled feeds. But, I still want to know where people have gone. Surely people aren't just, you know, going outside or something. Right?