Gary Zhou 
Twitter moved to the number one spot for news in the Apple App Store following Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. Twitter has only been at this ranking since January 9, 2023, but this isn’t the first time it has ranked at number one since Elon Musk purchased it.
The graphs by Data.Ai below show that as of October 12, 2022, Twitter’s growing rank was number seven for U.S. News in the Apple App Store. On October 28, just after the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk was finalized, the app’s ranking went up to six before yo-yo-ing between six and seven and then increased to number one on November 9, 2022.
Between December 11, 2022, and January 8, 2023, Twitter’s ranking bounced from the number two spot and dropped as low as number six before rising to number one on January 9, 2023. At the time of this writing, Twitter currently ranks number one for U.S. news in the Apple App store. The lowest it ranked after Elon Musk purchased the platform was at 11 in November.
Twitter’s download ranks have been a consistent number one for U.S. news since before Elon Musk purchased the platform and only dropped to the number two spot on Saturday, October 22, before rising back to the number one spot the next day.
Elon Musk has pointed out Twitter’s value as a news source many times. He mentioned that Twitter gives immediate news from the actual sources themselves and that the platform was like “open-sourcing the news.” He also said that local news organizations “are under-appreciated and should get way more prominence on Twitter.”
Preceding Twitter’s rise to number one on Monday, Elon Musk shared updates about Twitter’s formatting features on Sunday evening. In response to Noah Blum, Elon Musk said that the 4,000-word tweets would have the same Timeline screen space as other tweets with the option for clicking for more.
He added that Twitter plans to add simple formatting features like bold, underline, and font size later this quarter.
“The goal is to allow people to publish long-form natively on Twitter, rather than forcing them to use another website. Twitter will continue to recommend brevity in tweets,” he said.
