Elon Musk has now been in command of Twitter/X for 9 months, which has seen a raft of adjustments carried out on the app, together with UI tweaks, useful updates, expanded choices for paying subscribers, shifts in coverage, and extra.
Marking the brand new milestone, right now, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who herself has been within the function for less than two months, has taken the chance to credit her new team for his or her progress in growing the app, in alignment with Musk’s imaginative and prescient, which, in line with Yaccarino, has seen a heap of upgrades shipped in difficult circumstances.
As per Yaccarino:
“As we construct the way forward for X, the tempo of innovation speaks for itself. If we are able to obtain this in 9 months, simply think about the scope of our ambition within the subsequent 12 months. To all the groups and companions making it occur on a regular basis, thanks. To our passionate, rising communities of film buffs, sports activities fanatics, tech trailblazers, and the world over – the way forward for X belongs to YOU – blaze your glory!”
The latter observe being a reference to Twitter’s new ‘Blaze Your Glory’ tagline, which is a reference, intentional or not, to dying in a hail of gunfire. Not precisely positive how that applies on this occasion.
To underline the staff’s progress, Yaccarino has revealed a list of 73 key updates that the X staff has rolled out beneath Musk:
Which appears to be like spectacular, particularly when you think about that the X staff has executed all this with 80% fewer staff, after Musk’s mass cull.
However on nearer scrutiny, it’s not a completely correct illustration of recent work being executed on the app.
The overwhelming majority of those initiatives have been in improvement earlier than Musk got here in, together with Group Notes, Subscriptions, view counts, long-form posts, and so on. Most of those, as Musk himself has acknowledged, have been already near launch, however hadn’t been given the inexperienced gentle by earlier administration. In order that they’re not precisely new updates that the a lot smaller X staff have absolutely carried out, as such.
By my rely, of the 73 updates Yaccarino has listed, simply 12 of them are literally new, together with the up to date Twitter Blue (now ‘XBlue’) verification program, longer video uploads, the launch of its advert income share program, bookmark counts, voice and video calls, Highlights tab, improved video playback, and job listings.
The remainder of these improvements are both repeatedly talked about within the listing, have been already developed by the earlier Twitter staff, or aren’t really key upgrades in any respect (fee limits, the launch of its watered-down transparency report, minor video performance adjustments).
So solely 16% of those listed upgrades are literally new components. Which remains to be progress, and stays considerably spectacular with so few employees really left within the constructing. However I’ve by no means seen a platform so eager to pat itself on the again, and if that’s what you’re doing, you most likely need to make sure that these are certainly worthwhile, related enhancements that you simply’re claiming accountability for.
The true problem now, nonetheless, is what X does subsequent. There aren’t actually some other shelved components from Twitter 1.0 ready to be launched, so no matter comes any longer is definitely being wholly constructed by Elon’s new X staff. As such, the adjustments which are rolled out shifting ahead will extra intently mirror Elon’s imaginative and prescient for the app, and that’ll give us a significantly better thought of how they’re in a position to handle such with their skeleton crew.
Many have been predicting that, at some stage, Musk’s deep employees cuts will impede the app.
As Yaccarino is proud to focus on, that hasn’t occurred but, but it surely’ll be fascinating to see how this listing develops over the subsequent 9 months, and what that reveals of X’s new improvement method.
You’ll be able to learn Yaccarino’s full listing of X achievements here.
