X Tries to Woo Journalists Back with a New 'Link Experience'
For many journalists who have moved on, the question is a familiar one: have you left Twitter? Now, the platform formerly known as Twitter is making a new overture, hoping a fresh feature might be enough to lure some of them back.
On Sunday evening, X announced it was testing a new way to boost engagement for posts containing links—a move that seems squarely aimed at creators, media professionals, and others who share articles and news stories.
"We're testing a new link experience," wrote X head of product Nikita Bier in a post on the platform. "The goal is to make it easier for people to share and discover high-quality content, and to give publishers a better way to reach their audiences."
The new feature is designed to address one of the core frustrations for many users, particularly in the media community. For months, posts with links from certain publishers have been buried in a user's feed, a change widely seen as a way to push users toward subscribing to X Premium. This created a significant impediment for journalists and news organizations that rely on the platform to drive traffic to their work.
This new "link experience" appears to be a direct response to that feedback. While the specifics of the test are still under wraps, Bier noted that the company is focused on "improving the way links look and feel on X" and increasing their visibility for everyone.
It’s a clear attempt by X to win back a key segment of its user base that has become increasingly disillusioned. For journalists, the ability to easily share and have their articles seen is not just a matter of engagement; it’s central to their professional lives. A feature that reliably allows their work to reach a wider audience could be a powerful incentive to return to a platform they may have abandoned.
Whether this single change will be enough to reverse the tide remains to be seen. The challenges facing X are deep and multifaceted. But for a platform that has seen a significant exodus of influential voices, the decision to prioritize the very users who helped build its reputation as a global town square is a telling one.
The test is currently rolling out to a small group of users, but if successful, it could mark a significant shift in how X handles the content that has long been the lifeblood of its conversations: the humble hyperlink.