X has announced some new updates designed to streamline engagement in the app, while it’s also facing something of a revolt from one popular X community over its latest algorithm changes.
First off, X has announced an update to its notifications tab, with users on iOS and the web now able to access a new “Priority” tab, which will highlight interactions with mutual follows, and when big accounts engage with your posts.
That’ll make it easier to stay across all of the most important interactions in the app, with the “Priority” tab essentially taking the place of the “Verified” mention listing (according to X, most of its active users are now verified, so this is no longer a valuable filter for interactions).
So now, the most active users on X will have a streamlined connection display, which could make it easier to keep across all of the key engagements. It’s probably only useful for those who are getting hundreds of notifications per day, but X says that this has been a highly requested update for “power” users, so it could be of value in your process.
As you can see in the above example, you'll also now be able to see media previews within the notifications stream.
On another front, X is also rolling out an update to cashtags, which will give you more active asset listings to choose from when entering a $cashtag, and will enable users to tap through on the tag to get real-time price info and mentions.
X/Twitter has actually added expanded cashtag info like this several times, via a partnership with eToro in 2023, and via TradingView in 2022.
This updated version adds more info, and could eventually be part of a broader plan to enable asset trading on the platform, once XMoney is activated.
So, two handy new updates for specific X communities, though one community that would benefit from the second update in particular has been none-to-pleased with X’s head of product Nikita Bier of late.
Last week, Bier angered the crypto community (CT) on X by revealing that X’s algorithm essentially penalizes the reach of many of the posts that crypto fans share in the app.
Bier has since deleted the above reply, but as you can see, Bier explains here that replying to hundreds of posts each day actually does nothing to help your growth in the app, which had been a myth circulating within crypto communities.
Crypto fans will often reply with a basic “GM” or good morning post to their connections, and Bier is essentially saying that this is a useless, and ultimately harmful activity if they’re looking to improve their reach. That’s angered the crypto bros, to the point that they’re now calling for Bier to be replaced at the app.
Though that wasn’t the detail that caught my eye when reading Bier’s response.
Within his description, Bier notes that the average X user only views 20-30 posts per day.
I don’t know about you, but I reckon I skim through about 20 posts in less than a minute, which would suggest that X’s 600 million reported users would be using the app very, very little at present, based on this element.
That seems bad, no?
For comparison, TikTok claims that users spend 100 minutes per day in the app, on average.
It’s another questionable data point from X, which continues to claim radical growth and success, when all external measures don’t support such.
For example, in the past week, Bier has claimed:
- X has had its highest engagement days ever in January 2026, even including the app’s time as Twitter - A key note within this stat, however, is that this calculation only relates to “attested iOS devices who authenticate a phone number on a major carrier.” Managed Device Attestation (MDA) is an optional iOS feature, so this calculation only applies to a percentage of iOS users, and includes no Android devices.
- New users spend +43% more time in-app, which is an all-time high - X has not published any data to support this claim
- Existing users are spend 20% more time in the app - If viewing 20-30 posts per day equates to a 20% increase, X’s historic usage must be incredibly low
- Downloads are up 60% - I asked Similarweb about X’s claims of seeing record high download numbers back in September, and it said that nothing in its data suggests that X is seeing a major surge, outside of interest sparked by news events.
- Subscriptions crossed $1 billion – I suspect this means $1 billion overall, for the history of X Premium and Grok subscriptions, because previous investigations have pointed to X generating around $15 million per month from subscriptions. That would suggest that X would be lucky to be making $200 million per year in subscription revenue, but backdating that to the launch of X Premium, and adding in Grok revenue, I could see how cumulatively, this could equate to a billion in total.
Essentially, the data that X shares is pretty questionable, and without the full context as to how these figures are being calculated, I don’t really trust that they represent what X claims in most cases.
So, is X really seeing record growth and usage, and could it really be seeing a significant surge in interest in 2026?
The only official, auditable numbers I can point to on this are X’s EU active user stats, and they showed a slight uptick when X last reported them in October.
X saw a 7.5% increase in overall active users in Europe, after a year of losses, so maybe, based on that data, it is gaining somewhat. But I doubt that it’s in “record-breaking” territory.
Does that matter for your strategy?
Well, probably not. If your target audience is active on X, then it doesn't really matter if it has millions of users overall. But at 20-30 posts per session, that would suggest that most X users aren't seeing many ads in the app, which could mean that reaching your target users, even if they do use it, might be difficult.
