Elon Musk Announces Eligibility for X’s Revenue-Sharing Program for News Organizations

Recently, it was reported that Elon Musk, the billionaire, planned to eliminate headlines from link previews on X (formerly Twitter) in order to reduce the size of the preview box. However, this does not imply that he wants users and organizations to cease using the platform. In fact, Musk has openly invited journalists and news organizations to join the platform and engage in news sharing to start earning money through X’s revenue-sharing program. By removing the option to share headlines in links, it appears that Musk may be preparing for original or direct reporting on the social media site, encouraging writers to post directly on X.

Today, August 23rd, Musk tweeted: “Our ad revenue sharing program also applies to organizations (news or otherwise) who want to participate”. This tweet is part of Musk’s ongoing campaign, where he appears to be wooing media houses and journalists to start reporting news on the platform. Just two days ago, he wrote: “If you are a journalist who wants more freedom to write and higher income, publish directly on this platform”. In fact, he takes every opportunity to talk about how this is a great proposition. But is it really?

Elon Musk wants journalists and news organizations on the platform

It is true. One of X’s biggest USPs is that it’s set up to start conversations about big events happening right now. News organizations and journalists play a big role in driving this engagement, as every piece of news is first published on Twitter. In fact, some organizations publish their reports exclusively on X. So Musk doesn’t want this important source of engagement to disappear.

But removing the title link would probably convince you otherwise. After all, it’s hard to convey the content of an article with just a photo and a URL. Yet Musk is reportedly doing this.

This could mean that the billionaire wants to demand original reporting and unique platform-specific content. Journalists and news organizations can still write a headline and keep it outside the link preview. They can also add a small summary to clarify the direction of the article. And with monetary compensation, this could easily lead to X-specific exclusive stories in the near future.

While this is still speculative at best, if Musk is going to create the entire app, he needs to make sure that users stay on the platform and don’t leave it over and over again, because the super app’s playbook is completely based on engagement. As such, if journalists and news organizations are willing to write and explain the story, it saves users a click and keeps them scrolling longer.

Whether this is the direction Musk wants to go remains to be seen.