How Elon Musk is changing the Twitter experience

Elon Musk has stated that he wants to transform Twitter into an all-inclusive app that people can use for payments, news, and food orders.

“Buying Twitter is an accelerator to create X, the application of everything”, Mr. Musk aware in October, weeks before completing a $44 billion acquisition of the social network. He later said that Twitter could be like WeChat, the popular Chinese application that combines social networking, instant messaging and payment services.

But nearly six months after Musk took over Twitter, his ambitions for the platform have remained mostly just that: ambitions.

Though the billionaire has made dozens of tweaks to Twitter, they’ve largely been cosmetic. Its changes have mainly affected the look and feel of the platform, said Jane Manchun Wong, an independent software engineer who studies social applications. Those updates include adding more symbols and metrics that display with tweets, but the core elements of Twitter, which make it a place to quickly share news and discuss live events, haven’t changed.

Still, user experiences are changing. That’s because the types of tweets they see are affected by Musk’s behind-the-scenes tweaks. It changed the algorithm that decides which posts are most visible, removed content moderation rules that ban certain types of tweets, and changed a verification process that confirms users’ identities.

The result is a Twitter that looks like the way it always has, but is clunkier and less predictable in terms of the tweets that appear and are seen. users said. In some cases, that has caused confusion. Even Twitter employees have expressed their frustration.

Last month, Andrea Conway, a designer at Twitter, aware about the design changes, saying, “We know you hate it. We hate it too. We are working to make it stink less.” The modifications, he added she, could eventually make Twitter “completely unusable.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

So what looks different on Twitter now, and what are the underlying changes to the settings?

The newsfeed

The most noticeable difference is Twitter’s newsfeed, the stream of posts people see when they open the app. Newsfeeds previously appeared as a single stream of posts, showing tweets only from accounts a user followed.

Mr. Musk has split the newsfeed in two. Now, when users open the Twitter app, they see an algorithmically curated “For You” feed, which mimics a popular feature on TikTok, and a “Following” tab.

The “For You” newsfeed incorporates changes Mr. Musk has made to Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, getting more tweets from people a user doesn’t follow and suggesting new topics and interests. That also means that users can see posts from all kinds of content creators that they might not be interested in. At one point in February, the algorithm flooded users’ feeds with tweets from Mr. Musk.

Here’s what a user’s “For You” newsfeed might look like, with an example of a tweet from an account the user doesn’t follow that the algorithm suggests. In order for users to see posts only from people they follow, they would need to switch to the “Following” tab.

check marks

Mr. Musk also tweaked Twitter by adding a spate of color-coded checkmarks, which belie a deeper change in the way the platform confirms the identities of organizations, governments, notables and other official accounts.

Previously, Twitter offered white and blue checkmarks for users who were “verified,” a kind of badge for those who had verified their identities and who were usually public figures, such as politicians and celebrities. Check marks were free.

Musk began charging users an $8 monthly fee in exchange for a checkmark, and the free checkmarks began to disappear this month. Basically, it’s favoring payments from subscribers, building on the idea that a checkmark meant an account was notable.

Yellow checkmarks now indicate corporate accounts, while gray checkmarks indicate government official accounts. Companies can also add their logo to employee accounts, verifying their employment. People who pay get the blue and white check mark.

Those who paid for checkmarks would be boosted by Twitter’s recommendation algorithm and eligible to appear in people’s “For You” newsfeeds, Mr. Musk saying last month. That would prevent spam accounts from playing the algorithm and getting to the top of “For You” news sources, he added.

Metric, Metric, Metric

For most of Twitter’s history, users could only like, retweet, or reply to a post. The number of replies, likes, and retweets appeared at the end of a tweet.

With Musk, each tweet now has more metrics attached to it. He has added a count that shows how many times a post has been seen, and says that the total number of views can demonstrate a post’s popularity better than total likes or retweets. Twitter has also added a count of the number of times a tweet is flagged and saved.

That means each tweet now has the number of replies, likes, retweets, bookmarks, and views attached to it. Here’s an example of what tweets looked like before, when there were fewer numbers, and later, with more metrics displayed.

What do all these movements add up to? Not necessarily the smoothest experience, some Twitter users and employees said.

“Twitter has leaned into the ‘crazy guy’ contingent,” said Chris Messina, who is known as the inventor of the hashtag, adding that he now sees recommended tweets that don’t align with his interests. “In terms of the product, overall I think the quality has really gone backwards.”

Additional production by Jeanne Noonan DelMundo.