Porn, crypto more popular on Twitter as users lose interest in fashion, celebs: report

More Twitter users are gravitating toward pornographic and cryptocurrency-related content on the site while shunning broader topics favored by advertisers, according to a report.

Cryptocurrency and “not suitable for work” (NSFW) content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest-growing topics of interest among English-speaking heavy users, according to an internal Twitter report cited by Reuters.

At the same time, interest in news, sports and entertainment is waning among those users, the report said.

Tweets on the general-interest topics, which have helped Twitter burnish a reputation as the world’s “digital town square,” as Elon Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers.

Twitter is one of the few major social media platforms that permits nudity on its platform, and the company has estimated that adult content constitutes 13% of Twitter, according to a separate internal slide presentation seen by Reuters.

The presentation did not elaborate on how the figure was calculated.

Advertisers generally steer clear of controversy or nudity for fear of damaging their brands.

Major advertisers including Dyson, PBS Kids and Forbes suspended advertising due to accounts that were soliciting child pornography on Twitter, Reuters reported in September.

The internal report found that Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users — who are vital to the business — engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla chief executive as he approaches Friday’s deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.

These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue.

Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”

A “heavy tweeter” is defined as someone who logs in to Twitter six or seven days a week and tweets about three to four times a week, the document said.

Twitter’s most active English-speaking users were also increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies, reaching an all-time high in late 2021, the internal documents showed. But interest in the topic has declined since the crypto price crash in June, and the study noted cryptocurrencies may not be an area of growth in the future.

Twitter declined to specify how many of its tweets are in English or how much money it makes from English speakers.

But the demographic is important to Twitter’s business, some analysts say.

The platform earned more ad revenue from the United States than all other markets combined in its fourth quarter, according to its investor letter, and most ads in the United States are likely targeting English-speaking users, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at Insider Intelligence.

Twitter’s study examined the number of heavy tweeters in English who displayed an interest in a topic, based on the accounts they followed, and how that number of users changed over the past two years.

Musk has pledged to investors that he plans on closing the $44 billion acquisition by Friday, according to “a person familiar with the matter” cited by Reuters.

Equity investors, including Sequoia Capital, Binance, Qatar Investment Authority and others, have received the requisite paperwork for the financing commitment from Musk’s lawyers, the source added.

In the last month, Twitter’s stock price has soared by more than 27% as it became apparent that Musk — who has pledged to institute reforms and loosen content moderation restrictions at the site — would follow through with the acquisition at his original offer of $54.