Extra change is coming at X. The platform’s Head of Product Nikita Bier introduced on Wednesday that he’s stepping down after simply over a 12 months.
Bier, who got here to X after constructing two profitable social engagement apps of his personal, instructed customers in an X put up that though he’s leaving his present place, he’ll keep on as an advisor.
As per Bier: “Serving the X neighborhood has been the privilege of a lifetime. X is, and can stay, crucial communication expertise in historical past. However operating this app is a 24/7 job and it is now time for me to take a breather.”
Over the previous 12 months, Bier has turn into the general public voice of the app. Bier’s private X account has usually been the one communications channel sharing updates on app improvement.
Bier stated that in his time at X, the platform has seen “unprecedented progress in new customers & engagement,” and that it breaks information each month.
“We have climbed 70 spots within the App Retailer since this time final 12 months,” Bier stated. “And within the final 400 days, we rebuilt virtually each facet of X: the Timeline, the Android app, onboarding, notifications, chat and extra. We additionally launched practically 30 new merchandise whereas defending the integrity of the city sq.: turning into the primary app to indicate Nation-of-Origin on profiles and mounting defenses in opposition to AI bots.”
Nevertheless, Bier’s progress claims haven’t at all times been mirrored in X’s official reported numbers.
In February, per week after X proprietor Elon Musk stated the app was seeing record-high utilization, X’s personal EU DSA disclosure report confirmed that X utilization in Europe had really declined by 15% within the second half of 2025.
In January, Bier shared a chart displaying that common time spent each day on X was hitting new information virtually day-after-day.
But, when questioned concerning the numbers behind the chart, Bier stated the figures weren’t consultant of all customers, however as a substitute confirmed “attested iOS gadgets who authenticate with a telephone quantity on a significant service.”
As a part of the SpaceX prospectus printed in Might, X’s father or mother firm reported that the app had reached 550 million month-to-month lively customers as of March 2026, representing important progress on the 520 million MAU seen in December 2025. Nevertheless, in Might 2024, Musk stated X had reached 600 million MAU, a quantity that he and Bier have repeatedly referenced of their updates.
Given the variances in X’s selective reporting and the precise utilization stats the platform has printed in official, auditable codecs, plainly X hasn’t really seen the expansion momentum that Bier and Musk have claimed.
Even so, Bier has performed a task in bettering a number of components of the app, together with its incentive construction for creator monetization, in addition to its efforts to scale back the presence of bots and spam.
The query, then, is why is Bier leaving? If X is seeing such important success, with Bier being the general public voice of that, why would he be transferring on? And wouldn’t Musk be seeking to pay extra to maintain him round?
Possibly X is on the verge of one other huge shift, or perhaps dangerous information is on the horizon and Bier is getting out earlier than it hits.
