Twitter app X became No. 1 in the US App Store after the announcement of Carlson’s interview with Putin
After former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson announced an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the X platform, the number of downloads of the app, formerly known as Twitter, skyrocketed, putting X at number one in the US App Store. According to various media outlets, including Reuters, AP, and The New York Times, the interview has already taken place, and The Wall Street Journal reported that the interview is to be broadcast on Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
The interest in Carlson’s interview with Putin likely triggered a surge in new installations of the X app, which began climbing the App Store rankings around 7 p.m. ET and reached the top spot by midnight, according to app analysis company Appfigures. This move pushed Instagram’s competitor Threads off the top spot, which has now fallen to second place.
Carlson, in a video on a platform owned by Elon Musk, said he would soon show Putin’s first interview with a Western media outlet since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A Kremlin spokesman told Reuters that Putin agreed to the interview because Carlson’s approach differs from the “one-sided” coverage of Ukraine by many Western media outlets. In other words, Putin believes that he will receive not only a sympathetic ear, but also an opportunity to convey his position to a wider, potentially sympathetic audience.
It’s also worth noting that the surge in interest in X was not only due to the news about Tucker Carlson.
Yesterday, X’s competitor, Bluesky, opened its doors to the general public after being available by invitation only. This year, Bluesky plans to launch a federation, which means that it will act as a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X, similar to Mastodon. However, it uses a different underlying protocol, the AT Protocol, while Mastodon and Instagram Threads, another X competitor, are built on ActivityPub.
Despite the fact that Bluesky attracted about 800,000 new users yesterday, it is not currently among the top 100 free apps in the US App Store.
