© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is making a radical change to how it displays news articles on its service. Tweets with links will no longer show any headline or text, but only the lead image of the article, according to a Fortune report.
The change means that users who want to share news articles on X will have to write their own captions or summaries to accompany the links, or else their tweets will only show an image with a URL overlay. Clicking on the image will still take users to the original article on the publisher’s website, but the lack of context could affect how users engage with the content.
The source said that the change is being driven by X owner Elon Musk, who wants to reduce the height of tweets and make more room for other posts on the timeline. Musk also believes that removing headlines will help combat clickbait, the source said.
The move could have significant implications for publishers and advertisers who rely on X to drive traffic and revenue. Publishers may have to adjust their strategies to attract users’ attention and entice them to click on their links. Advertisers may have to rethink their campaigns and how they measure their performance on X.
The change also affects the Cards format, which was introduced years ago to allow tweets with links to display more information than the 140-character limit at the time. The Cards format enabled publishers to show headlines, descriptions, and images in their tweets, without counting against the character limit. But with the limit being bumped up as many as 25,000 characters in a single post, X wants individuals and publishers to add deeper context around an article – right in the post itself.
On Monday, Musk wrote in an X post that journalists who want “more freedom to write and a higher income” should “publish directly on this platform!”
