Elon Musk’s X revamped its look to eliminate headlines on article links Wednesday, the same day that Reuters reported the platform has seen massive monthly ad-revenue losses since the billionaire bought it last year.
Citing third-party data provided to it, Reuters reported Wednesday that X — formerly Twitter — has seen year-over-year monthly ad revenue declines of at least 55% every month since Musk took over last October. Ad revenue in August was down 60% year over year, the report said.
Musk has acknowledged steep a dropoff in ad revenue, and according to Reuters, X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino is expected to meet this week with bank lenders who helped finance Musk’s acquisition to update them on the company’s plans.
Last week, Yaccarino said at a tech conference that 90% of X’s top 100 advertisers had resumed placing ads, and claimed the company could be profitable next year.
Meanwhile, X’s app has a new look, as many users can no longer see a headline on articles posted on the platform. Instead, users see only a blurb at the top, and an image that can be clicked on. The change appeared to be rolling out in stages across different platforms. At last check Wednesday evening, headlines were stripped for many iOS and desktop users, but were apparently still showing up on the Android app.
Many users pointed out that the change is causing confusion, since many posts now lack context from a headline.
The change had been expected, with Musk tweeting in August: “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics.”
Since buying Twitter for $44 billion last year, Musk has moved to downgrade news content, and has suggested users should write longer posts rather than include links in order to boost engagement.
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