When I visited X first thing in the morning as one does and saw the "Articles" tab, my first thought was "Good, they've fixed the "Top Articles" feature". Only later that day, this time on my Mac, when I clicked on it to read said articles I realized: content creation has changed forever.
Now y'all might think I'm bullish on X (mandatory "formerly known as Twitter" sidenote here) and you'll be right for once: I always liked Twitter, sympathized with Musk, and preferred to stick to the political middle (I know, I know, so very contrarian of me), so obviously, I love X. I'm a proud "blue check" or whatever the hell we are called now. And I'm not even hiding it! You see, I tend to support the causes I ...well, support with money. I found this to be the most effective way. Also, I try to use them as much as possible, that also helps.
So here it is, a new feature on X. This positions X as a Substack competitor, like better video tools, and that Mr. Beast video tried to position it against the last great digital monopoly "YouTube". I'll look more into the video creation on the platform, but articles are, well, easier for me, so I decided to write one. All I needed was a good topic for the first one, so here we are.
Look, I know and so do y'all: X is not there yet. I don't know what Musk's "everything app" vision will shape up to be, but we're not close to it yet. Now don't get me wrong, great features are getting added every other month, like video calls, video spaces, video tools, and other stuff some of which are not video-related. Oh, and Grok, gotta love Grok. All these features add up to a decent value for the Premium subscription money, especially for the creators. And unlike say YouTube, pretty much everybody in here's a creator. Yup, that meme you posted, it's content. Hell, if enough people stumble upon it, you might get paid! (if you got Premium, and they got Premium too, but still.)
But this "native articles" feature struck me differently. While it sounds like the "Facebook instant articles but on X" feature some media outlets are calling it, I think there's a crucial difference here. And to appreciate it, we need to understand the difference between Zuck's Facebook and Musk's X.
Facebook, especially the 2010's version, before the Meta rebranding and change of focus, was a different beast. The biggest social network by far, it was inescapable for most. Wanted to check on what friends are up to? Facebook Timeline! Don't like Facebook? Instagram! Chat with friends? Messenger! Don't like Messenger? WhatsApp! Starting a business? Facebook Pages! Starting a community? Facebook Groups! Selling something? Facebook ads! It was everywhere! For some people, it could replace the whole internet, something only Google was allowed to do before. I vaguely remember Facebook providing internet access to some remote locations via ballons of all things, with the caveat that only Facebook-owned apps were accessible. With this picture in mind, it's easy to understand why Facebook would push to incorporate the missing puzzle pieces to their dominance: video, audio, games, shopping, dating, and yes, instant articles. Sounds an awful lot like an "everything app", innit? Because it was.
So why did it fail? And I assure you, it did: even if Facebook is still huge, it lost its focus, coolness, and relevance long ago. Competitors like Snapchat and TikTok and sister apps "Instagram" and "WhatsApp" overshadowed it in all these verticals. Zuck knows this, hence the change in the company name and focus to "Meta". It's apparent his heart was never in the "connect everyone" mantra of early Facebook, especially after you see his enthusiasm for the "metaverse". Once considered a YouTube killer, the "Facebook Watch" app on my Apple TV is no more, and the "instant articles" have been discontinued since 2022. So yes, "Facebook the Everything App" failed.
Twitter was never as popular as Facebook and co: a fraction of the user base, short-form messages, and highly politicized content, it was never the social network of choice for normies. This and the mismanagement of the few prominent acquisitions like "Periscope" and "Vine" didn't allow the platform nor the company to grow to the gargantuan size of Facebook. But with all this said, Twitter always seemed more relevant, more important, more in the zeitgeist. It remained the place for real-time news, views, and events. Especially after Musk's acquisition and rebranding, with the extreme polarization of society caused by social media algorithm manipulation among other factors, its role as "the free speech platform" and "the public square of the internet" is more prominent than ever.
This is the main difference between the two apps, companies, and owners. Zuck was in it for the money, he did his best and moved on to the next thing. Musk paid $44 billion for it and doesn't have to answer to shareholders. So I don't see him losing focus halfway and moving on. Hell, the guy's famous for faking it until making it. Had Twitter added this feature, I'd be pessimistic, but with X doing it, I'm in.
Now let's see how this article does, shall we?