Elon Musk's X Restores Headlines To Article Links But There's A Twist

Elon Musk-owned social media platform X has once again started showing news headlines alongside links shared to the service.

The move comes after Elon Musk stripped out headlines from news organizations’ posts on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Users were only able to see the post and lead image associated with the story it links to since October last year. Musk, however, promised in November 2023 that headlines would reappear over URL cards.

According to a report in The Verge, X has made multiple changes while bringing back the feature. If a headline or title is too long, it gets cut off with ellipses and the text size is small, the report said.

The changes have started appearing on the website but not on the iOS app yet while on Android, headlines still appear in the same way they used to before all the changes were made.

According to Bloomberg, Musk said in August the move would “greatly improve esthetics" but was criticised by several users.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that X is on track to bring in roughly $2.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2023 — a significant slump from prior years.

X generated a little more than $600 million in advertising revenue in each of the first three quarters of the year and is anticipating a similar performance in the current period, a person familiar with the numbers told Bloomberg. That compares to more than $1 billion per quarter in 2022. 

X has historically relied on advertising for the bulk of its sales, but that business has been in decline since Musk’s takeover.