Since Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), he has introduced many big changes and it seems like he is not going to stop making these changes anytime soon. Recently, he has been in the news for his plans to transform how articles are presented on X.
Musk is planning to eliminate headlines and textual content from news articles linked in tweets and according to the reports by Fortune, this update will result in showing only the lead image alongside the link.
Musk verified this, when he responded to a tweet from X News Daily where he He wrote, “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the aesthetics.”
This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 22, 2023
After this update, both individuals and publishers will have to manually provide text alongside the URL they decide to share on X. Without the text, the tweets will only show the article’s image, without any additional context.
This move can hugely impact news publishers who depend on social media platforms to generate traffic for their websites.
Traditionally, a article posted on X has an image, a headline, and a brief summary of the article. However, the platform now aims to discourage the use of clickbait and shallow headlines for getting clicks.
Interestingly, Musk had very recently extended an invitation to journalists who seek “more freedom to write and a higher income” to publish directly on the platform.
