For most businesses, no. For a few, yes, and the few are specific: B2B in tech, finance and media, anyone whose customers are journalists, and businesses whose founder genuinely enjoys posting there. If you are not in one of those groups, the time is better spent elsewhere.
This is a question people find difficult to ask neutrally, because the platform is politically loaded now. The commercial question is separate from that, and it is answerable.
How many people are actually still there?
Fewer than the conversation about it suggests, and that is the important part.
Pew Research's 2025 survey of 5,022 US adults, conducted between February and June, found usage split fairly evenly across political lines: 24% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they use X, against 19% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. That puts overall usage at roughly one in five US adults.
Worth noting what Pew's own report does with X: it groups it in a sentence with Reddit and Snapchat as platforms "somewhat fewer adults" use, rather than giving it the standalone treatment YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok get. When the reference source stops breaking a platform out, that is itself information.
For comparison from the same survey: YouTube 84%, Facebook 71%, Instagram 50%, TikTok 37%, WhatsApp 32%, Reddit 26%.
X is not dead. It is mid-sized, and it is no longer the default place where things happen.
Does the political shift matter commercially?
Yes, but not in the way the argument usually goes.
The relevant commercial fact is not which direction the platform leans. It is that a meaningful share of any general consumer audience now has a view about the platform itself, which means posting there is read as a signal rather than as neutral distribution.
For a B2B software company selling to engineers, that costs approximately nothing. For a consumer brand with a broad audience, it is a real consideration, and pretending otherwise is not commercially serious.
That is a judgment call about your specific customers rather than a rule. What I would push back on is making the decision on the basis of your own feelings about the platform, in either direction, rather than on where your buyers are.
Who does it still work for?
Four groups, fairly reliably.
B2B technology, finance and crypto. These audiences did not leave. The conversation in those sectors still substantially happens on X, and being absent is a genuine cost.
Anyone whose customers include journalists. Press still lives there. If earned media matters to your business, that alone can justify an account.
Businesses with a founder who enjoys it. This sounds soft and it is the strongest predictor I know. X rewards frequent, conversational, opinionated posting. Somebody who finds that enjoyable will do it well and sustain it. Somebody doing it as a task will produce corporate filler that gets no engagement, and will stop within a quarter.
Real-time and support use cases. Live events, outages, service updates. The platform is still good at now.
Outside those, the honest answer for most local businesses, ecommerce brands and service companies is that the same effort produces more on other platforms.
What about the alternatives?
Smaller, and not yet a replacement.
Threads and Bluesky both exist, and Pew groups them with Truth Social as platforms used by "about one-in-ten or fewer" US adults. Reddit and Snapchat sit in the same mid-sized band as X and are worth judging on the same terms. Neither has reached the scale where absence from X is offset by presence there.
That is not a permanent state and both are worth watching. It does mean that "we left X for Bluesky" usually describes a reduction in reach rather than a lateral move. I compare the two directly in the Threads and Bluesky post.
If you do use it, what works?
The same things that always worked there, which is one reason the platform is easier to judge than most.
Post often and conversationally. X rewards volume and replies more than polish. An account posting once a week in a corporate register will get nothing regardless of how good the writing is.
Reply more than you post. Almost all the value I have seen businesses get from X came from participating in other people's conversations rather than broadcasting into their own.
Do not post links as the main content. Same pattern as everywhere else: the platform prefers you stay. Put the substance in the post.
And run it from a person rather than a logo where you can. The dynamics are similar to LinkedIn in that respect, for the same reason: people reply to people. I went through that in the LinkedIn best practices post.
How do you decide?
Two questions, and you need a yes to one of them.
Are your customers demonstrably there? Not "might be there". Can you name accounts, communities or conversations that involve your actual buyers. If you cannot find them in ten minutes of looking, they are probably not there in useful numbers.
Will a specific person enjoy running it? Named person, not a role. X punishes reluctance more visibly than any other platform because the register is conversational and reluctance reads as stiffness.
If both answers are no, the decision is easy: keep the handle so nobody else takes it, post nothing, and spend the time on a platform where the answer is yes.
Keeping the handle matters more than it sounds. Abandoning an account entirely and letting the name go is a small permanent loss for no gain.
What I see when businesses ask about X
Two failure modes, opposite in shape and equally common.
The first is the account maintained out of obligation. Three posts a week, all links to blog articles, no replies, engagement in single digits, running for years because nobody wants to be the person who suggested stopping. That account costs real time and returns nothing.
The second is the abrupt exit made on principle, without checking whether the audience was there. Sometimes that is the right call. Frequently the business discovers a quarter later that a chunk of its inbound was coming from a platform it left on impulse.
Both are decisions made about the platform rather than about the customers.
What to do on Monday
Spend ten minutes searching X for the terms your customers would use, and for two or three competitors. Are there live conversations involving people who could buy from you, dated this month? That is the entire test.
If yes, name the person who will run it and let them post in their own voice. If no, keep the handle, post nothing, and put the hour a week somewhere it compounds.
FAQ
Is X still useful for business in 2026? For most businesses, no. It works reliably for B2B technology, finance and crypto, for anyone whose customers include journalists, and for businesses with a founder who genuinely enjoys posting conversationally. Outside those, the same effort returns more elsewhere.
How many people use X? Roughly one in five US adults. Pew Research's 2025 survey found 24% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats reported using it, and Pew's report groups X with Reddit and Snapchat rather than breaking it out alongside the larger platforms.
Should we delete our X account? Usually not. Keep the handle so nobody else takes it, even if you stop posting. Deleting is a permanent loss for no gain, and the running cost of a dormant handle is zero.
Is Bluesky or Threads a replacement for X? Not yet at the level of reach. Pew groups both with Truth Social as platforms used by about one in ten US adults or fewer, so moving from X to either is usually a reduction rather than a lateral move.
What actually works on X for business? Frequent conversational posting, replying more than broadcasting, keeping links out of the main post, and running the account from a named person rather than a logo.
About the author
Adam Palmer is President of Inertia Digital Marketing, the agency behind Social Fonts. He has spent 15 years running paid and organic campaigns for clients ranging from single-location small businesses to national franchise networks, and has managed over $50 million in paid digital spend.