X Could Soon Stop Displaying Headlines on News Articles, Says Elon Musk

Elon Musk is pushing to alter how information hyperlinks seem on his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, in a transfer that would probably undermine the flexibility of stories publishers to attract viewers. 

X is planning to take away the headline and textual content whereas retaining simply the lead picture from hyperlinks to information articles shared on the platform, Musk mentioned in a publish late on Monday.

The transfer is probably going an try by Musk to get customers to spend extra time on X and push them to decide the subscription service for extra particulars.

It will not be instantly clear how the transfer will impression advertisers on the platform that Musk claimed in July had 540 million month-to-month customers. 

Currently information hyperlinks come up on the timeline of customers as “cards” together with a picture, supply handle and an abridged headline. Such a packaging helps draw clicks and helps publishers achieve readers.

But with the shortened hyperlinks, customers may find yourself writing some textual content together with their posts and finally they may take into account X’s premium service that permits a single publish of as much as 25,000 characters.

With the adjustments, Musk is pitching X as a extra related platform for content material creators. Premium subscribers can now publish longer movies, their posts are proven increased up and so they additionally obtain a reduce of advert gross sales.

The X head additionally introduced a couple of days in the past to eliminate the ‘block’ function quickly. The block perform on X permits a person to limit particular accounts from contacting them, seeing their posts or following them. However, he talked about that the customers will nonetheless get the flexibility to dam in DMs. 

© Thomson Reuters 2023