X’s UX update wants to save your links from social media’s black hole

Can a UX change bring traffic back to X?

The social network previously known as Twitter is hoping an update to its in-app browser will boost links on the timeline and lure back publishers and creators who’ve grown ambivalent to a site that doesn’t drive clicks like it used to.

X head of product Nikita Bier wrote in a post Sunday that a new link experience that will first be tested out on iOS is intended to “make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.”

Currently, users who click links on X are taken to an in-app browser that takes up the full screen. Under the update, which Bier shared in a demo video, clicking on a link instead collapses the post’s engagement bar to the bottom of the screen, letting users comment, repost, like, or save from inside the story as they scroll and read.

From the looks of it, it’s a more seamless experience that better integrates links into the larger X experience rather than the friction that comes from opening a link in a slow-loading browser. The change could encourage more engagement for posts with links, which in turn would surface more links on the timeline.

“For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach,” Bier wrote. “This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn’t get a clear signal whether the content is any good.”

The announcement comes amid wider changes at X. Owner Elon Musk also announced Sunday that the site’s recommendations are “evolving very rapidly” and within four to six weeks, xAI’s Grok system “will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content they’re most likely to find interesting.”

While links may be buried in X’s timeline today, the right algorithm tweaks and UX changes could better surface posts with links and make the site more friendly for creators and publishers. Bier denied that links are de-boosted on X’s timeline now, but said they do “have lower engagement and we are trying to fix that.”

“If you’re a writer or journalist who left X in the last couple years, coming back could be the biggest arbitrage opportunity of your career,” he wrote.

Once the online water cooler of digital media, X now drives less referral traffic for publishers than it previously did, while X’s own usage data released earlier this year suggests a decline in time spent on the app. Outlets like PBS, NPR, and The Guardian have stopped posting there altogether, as news influencers and journalists have turned to alternatives like Bluesky, Substack, LinkedIn, and Threads to build their online audiences.

As social media companies adapt to a changing landscape, UX and UI changes can help nudge users towards new behaviors (see Meta’s push into vertical video or upgrades to its DMs). For X, a change to the experience of clicking links and interacting with articles on its app could help make it more welcoming to the writers and readers who powered Twitter in its heyday.

View the full article