David Bridges
Highlights
- New Feature: X has introduced a “View quotes” option in the app’s function bar for expanded post interactions.
- Engagement Focus: Nikita Bier aims to enhance engagement by showcasing top content through this feature.
- UI Updates: Recent changes include updates to screenshot sharing, bug fixes, and lengthening of cashtags.
- Testing Phase: The new “View quotes” feature is currently being tested on iOS devices.
X is adding another way to view expanded interaction with X posts, with a new “View quotes” quick link within the lower function bar options on updates.
As you can see in this example, some X users are now seeing a new “View quotes” in the expanded post view in the app.
That’ll give you another way to see how a post is being discussed by people beyond the direct replies, rather than having to tap the re-post icon itself.
Which is a small update, and not really a massive functional change. But X’s recently appointed head of product Nikita Bier says that this new entry point will help to “surface some of the best content” in the app.
Bier has been tasked with uncovering new ways to encourage engagement in the app, applying his knowledge of viral dynamics to X’s long-standing UI.
Because despite Elon and Co.’s many proclamations of many changes at the app since he took over back in 2022, really, the X user experience is pretty much the same as it’s always been.
That’s not to say that the X team isn’t improving the app. The now much smaller X team (after Musk’s staff cull) is shipping smaller tweaks and changes at a solid rate. But in a broader sense, I don’t feel like using X is really any different from when it was Twitter.
Even though it’s now a “video first” app. Even though Elon is “transforming the global town square.”
Musk’s “everything app” vision might still be coming, with payments at the center of a revised X UI. But at this stage, most of the X updates are fairly minor, which is what Twitter had also been criticized for in the years before Elon purchased the app.
So maybe, then Nikita Bier, having built several of his own trending apps, can change things up.
So far, Bier has:
- Updated screenshot sharing of X posts
- Fixed a long-standing bug related to the timeline refreshing at random
- Expanded the length of cashtags
- Updated the process for communicating with @grok
Of course, there’s likely way more internal projects that Bier is also involved with, but in terms of public-facing updates, these are the changes that we’ve seen so far in his first weeks at the app.
Maybe, more significant UI changes are coming, and maybe, all of these smaller updates are cumulatively delivering a larger-scale improvement in overall engagement and usage.
The new “View quotes” option is currently in testing on iOS.
Sophie Langley
