No More Confusion: Articles On X Will Soon Have Their Headlines Again
Guess it didn't work out after all.
By Syazwan Bahri — 24 Nov 2023, 04:10 PM
In August this year, Elon Musk changed the way links show up on the timeline of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter
Previously, links shared via tweets would show the article's headline as well as thumbnail.
However, the change involved removing headlines, so only the thumbnail would be displayed. A tweet dated 22 August by Musk revealed that this was done in order to "improve the esthetics (sic)" on the social media platform.
On Wednesday, 23 November, Musk announced that headlines will be making a comeback on X, albeit in a different format
"X will overlay the title in the upper portion of the image of a URL card" read a tweet posted by the X owner.
In a subsequent tweet dated 23 November, Musk said that the headlines would be overlaid onto the image of an article rather than being positioned beneath it, emphasising the importance of every pixel.
The feature has yet to go live. Musk also did not mention specifically when exactly will the feature return, nor did he provide an example of what it would look like.
Musk's decision to remove headlines changed the way people share articles on X
This is simply because articles on X lack context unless the headline is part of the post or shared in the article image.
Musk, who makes all decisions at X and leads product and engineering, has expressed his dislike for links on the platform, as they redirect users away from the service. He has also noted that the content-ranking algorithm on the platform tends to give lower priority to posts containing links.
