CEO Reveals X Platform Paid Out Nearly $20 Million to Content Creators
In October of last year, Elon Musk finalized his acquisition of X (formerly known as Twitter) and wasted no time in implementing his vision for the company. He swiftly downsized the workforce, prioritizing the quality of work over the quantity of employees. Musk celebrated his purchase by proclaiming the liberation of the “bird,” but recently, he decided to rebrand Twitter as X, with the intention of transforming it into a powerful super app similar to China’s WeChat. Additionally, X has been actively encouraging content creators to produce content on its platform by offering financial incentives, resulting in millions of dollars being distributed thus far.
X is paid by content producers
In an X message on September 29, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced that the platform has paid out nearly $20 million to content creators on its platform. The post said: “Create. Connect. Collect everything from X. We’re enabling financial success for new segments like content creators. And to date, we’ve paid out nearly $20 million to our content creator community.”
While this may seem like a lot, the amount paid by YouTube in recent years dwarfs this number. According to a letter published in 2021 by CEO Susan Wojcic, YouTube has paid out nearly $30 billion to content creators over the past three years for ads and sales.
The post was in response to another post by X boss Elon Musk, who announced a new feature on his platform that would allow creators to only allow DMs from subscribers. Musk wrote: “Being able to talk to your favorite creators is a great reason to subscribe!”
About profits and advertisers
At Code Conference 2023, CNBC Senior Media and Technology Correspondent Julia Boorstin joined X CEO Linda Yaccarino for a conversation. Yaccarino revealed that from an “operating cash flow” perspective, X is “pretty much breakeven.” However, it may even turn profitable next year, as the CEO mentioned: “We will make a profit”.
Yaccarino was also asked about advertisers who have left the platform before. He revealed that 90 percent of all top 100 advertisers have now returned to X, with 1,500 returning in the past 12 weeks.
Recently, Musk hit the headlines when he announced that X will “move to a small monthly fee” that will be charged to all users who want to use the platform. In defending Chief X against those accusations, Yaccarino sidestepped the question by saying, “Did he say we’re going to go for it, or did he say that’s the plan?”, Yaccarino said.
