From: allin
The social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, was acquired and rebranded as X.com, or simply X, by Elon Musk, who serves as its owner, chairman, and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) [00:00:26]. The transition from its previous name to “X” is acknowledged as something that will take time for people to adapt to [00:06:38].
Vision and Philosophy
The core vision for the X platform is to be a level playing field and a public square that supports the majority of the country, estimated to be the middle 80% [00:17:10]. This contrasts with the previous state of “all social media”, including Twitter, which was perceived as “very, very left-leading” or “far left leading” [00:17:31]. Elon Musk claims that during its previous ownership, Twitter suppressed Republican voices and interests at least ten times the rate of suppressing left-leaning voices [00:17:41]. The current effort is to move the platform to the middle, which may appear as moving to the right from a left perspective, but the goal is to represent the entire country and the world [00:18:00].
The platform aims for transparency, with almost all of its algorithm being open-sourced, and a plan to open-source the entire algorithm soon, once the code is “cleaned up” [00:23:51]. The objective is to allow users to independently recreate results and understand how posts go viral [00:24:13].
Turnaround and Performance
Elon Musk took over Twitter, now X, around Halloween weekend, and the platform has been undergoing a turnaround for about 10 months as of the recording [00:18:41]. The company was described as not “high functioning” at the time of acquisition [00:19:01].
Key progress points include:
- Advertising Revenue
- Recently observed a significant increase in advertising [00:19:23].
- If this trend continues, the company is expected to be in “very good Financial shape” on the advertising front [00:19:29].
- Despite this, the platform experienced a “massive drop” in U.S. advertising, specifically a 60% drop, in areas where the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) is strong, following what was called a “boycott” or “pause” by the ADL [00:27:00]. This drop was not observed in Asia [00:27:20].
- Third-party analyses reportedly showed a decline in views of hateful content on the platform [00:27:41].
- Feature Development
- More new features have been delivered in the past year than Twitter delivered in its previous five years [00:19:51].
- The feature development pace is “very rapid” [00:20:03].
- Efficiency and Staffing
- This progress is achieved with only about 15-20% of the original company staff [00:20:07].
- Elon Musk suggests that the X/Twitter platform, viewed as a “group chat at scale,” does not require an “army” to maintain [00:20:29]. He notes that Tesla’s self-driving AI software team, with only 200 people, handles a more complex task than Twitter/X [00:20:50].
- User Engagement
- The most precise number for success is “user seconds,” especially screen time as reported by iOS devices, which is considered the “least gameable metric” [00:21:47]. These numbers are “very good” [00:22:02].
- The system optimizes for user time and “unregretted user minutes” [00:24:44].
- Content that users spend more time on, such as long-form articles, videos, or podcasts posted natively, will receive higher priority and more reach compared to external links [00:25:55]. This contrasts with TikTok, where some users report regretting the time spent [00:25:29].
Creator Economy
X aims to be the “best home for creators” [00:23:37].
- Revenue Sharing
- The platform has implemented revenue sharing with creators from advertising, similar to YouTube’s model [00:23:06].
- This provides “fair” and “competitive compensation” for creators, regardless of content format (writing, pictures, video) [00:22:47].
- Direct Subscriptions
- Direct subscriptions to accounts have been enabled, allowing creators to earn a living from subscribers who engage with their audio, video, or long-form text content [00:23:14].
The company is optimistic about its trajectory and feels it has “turned a corner” [00:22:09].