By Seli Baisie
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind renowned companies such as Tesla and SpaceX, made a significant announcement on Monday, August 21st.
He extended an intriguing offer to journalists seeking both increased creative freedom and higher financial rewards: the opportunity to publish their work directly on X, formerly recognized as Twitter.
Musk acquired this micro-blogging platform just last year.
In a recent X post, Musk explicitly conveyed his message to the journalistic community: “If you’re a journalist who wants more freedom to write and a higher income, then publish directly on this platform.”
Musk had previously hinted at plans to enable media publishers on X to charge readers for access to their articles. This new approach involves a “per article basis” payment model, potentially resulting in higher costs for users who opt out of a monthly subscription.
The enigmatic CEO is orchestrating significant changes within the platform.
Reports suggest that Musk is poised to modify the display format of news articles. Going forward, tweets containing external links will showcase solely the main image associated with the news piece.
This strategic shift stems directly from Musk’s belief that this alteration will combat clickbait content and also reduce the vertical space occupied by tweets.
Emphasizing the authenticity of this adjustment, Musk himself took to X, affirming, “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the aesthetics.”
It remains to be seen how these proposed adjustments will be implemented across X’s platform.