 "Twitter, X")
X, formerly known as Twitter, is planning a major change in how news will appear on the platform. Twitter with links will no longer show any headline or text but only the lead image of the article, a report by Fortune said.
The users, while sharing a link, will have to enter their captions or summaries. If captions are not entered, the post will appear with just an image with a URL overlay.
Later, X's owner Elon Musk confirmed the development in a post on the platform. "This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics," he said.
According to Forbes, the primary objective of this move is to reduce the height of tweets, thus allowing more posts to fit within the portion of the timeline that appears on the screen. Musk also believes the change will help curb clickbait.
A source was quoted as saying, "It's something Elon wants. They were running it by advertisers, who didn't like it, but it's happening."
It added that Musk thinks articles occupy excessive space on the timeline. The platform has been facing challenges in retaining advertisers on its platform.
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Linda Yaccarino, the company's chief executive officer (CEO), has been dedicated to resolving the issue.
The change also affects the Cards format, which was introduced years ago to allow tweets with links to display more information than the 140-character limit at the time.
The Cards format enabled publishers to show headlines, descriptions, and images in their tweets without counting against the character limit. But with the limit being bumped up to as many as 25,000 characters in a single post, X wants individuals and publishers to add deeper context around an article – right in the post itself.
On Monday, Musk wrote in an X post that journalists who want "more freedom to write and a higher income" should "publish directly on this platform!"
