X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, is planning a major change in how news articles appear on the service, stripping out the headline and other text so that tweets with links display only an article's lead image, according to material viewed by Fortune.
Roughly four hours after the publication of this article, Elon Musk confirmed these plans, posting that "this is coming from me directly," and it "will greatly improve the esthetics."
The change means that anyone sharing a link on X—from individual users to publishers—would need to manually add their own text alongside the links they share on the service; otherwise the tweet will display only an image with no context other than an overlay of the URL. While clicking on the image will still lead to the full article on the publisher's website, the change could have major implications for publishers who rely on social media to drive traffic to their sites as well as for advertisers.
According to a source with knowledge of the matter, the change is being pushed directly by X owner Elon Musk. The primary objective appears to be to reduce the height of tweets, thus allowing more posts to fit within the portion of the timeline that appears on screen. Musk also believes the change will help curb clickbait, the source said.
"It’s something Elon wants. They were running it by advertisers, who didn’t like it, but it’s happening," the source said, adding that Musk thinks articles occupy excessive space on the timeline. The platform is known for its ongoing challenge in retaining advertisers, a problem that X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino has been dedicated to resolving over the past 8 weeks.
A big change at X is in the cards
In practice, when a user encounters a shared article on their timeline (called a "Card" in Twitter lingo), it comprises several visual elements: an image, a short headline, and a brief description of the article. As outlined in X's developer documentation, there are various types of "cards," with news articles falling under the category known as "summary with large image."
The Cards format was developed years ago, at a time when tweets were limited to 140 characters. Since the text within the card does not count against a tweet's character limit, the format was a vital way to share content on Twitter without exceeding the character limit.
But because the headlines and other text in Cards are abridged to fit the format, the headlines often lack the intricacies of the a complete article (and, in the opinion of some critics, incentivize short, clickbait pitches). By eliminating all content except the image, X's intention is that individuals sharing this type of content will be forced to write a more engaging post.