Can a UX change carry site visitors again to X?
The social community beforehand often known as Twitter is hoping an replace to its in-app browser will increase hyperlinks on the timeline and lure again publishers and creators who’ve grown ambivalent to a website that doesn’t drive clicks prefer it used to.
X head of product Nikita Bier wrote in a submit Sunday {that a} new hyperlink expertise that may first be examined out on iOS is meant to “make it simpler on your followers to have interaction together with your submit whereas shopping hyperlinks.”
Presently, customers who click on hyperlinks on X are taken to an in-app browser that takes up the complete display screen. Below the replace, which Bier shared in a demo video, clicking on a hyperlink as a substitute collapses the submit’s engagement bar to the underside of the display screen, letting customers remark, repost, like, or save from contained in the story as they scroll and skim.
We're testing a brand new hyperlink expertise, beginning on iOS — to make it simpler on your followers to have interaction together with your submit whereas shopping hyperlinks.
For creators, a standard criticism is that posts with hyperlinks are inclined to get decrease attain. It’s because the net browser covers the submit and… pic.twitter.com/oWraLpPwji
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) October 19, 2025
From the seems to be of it, it’s a extra seamless expertise that higher integrates hyperlinks into the bigger X expertise relatively than the friction that comes from opening a hyperlink in a slow-loading browser. The change may encourage extra engagement for posts with hyperlinks, which in flip would floor extra hyperlinks on the timeline.
“For creators, a standard criticism is that posts with hyperlinks are inclined to get decrease attain,” Bier wrote. “It’s because the net browser covers the submit and folks overlook to Like or Reply. So X doesn’t get a transparent sign whether or not the content material is any good.”
The announcement comes amid wider adjustments at X. Proprietor Elon Musk additionally introduced Sunday that the positioning’s suggestions are “evolving very quickly” and inside 4 to 6 weeks, xAI’s Grok system “will actually learn each submit and watch each video (100M+ per day) to match customers with content material they’re almost definitely to seek out attention-grabbing.”
Whereas hyperlinks could also be buried in X’s timeline at present, the fitting algorithm tweaks and UX adjustments may higher floor posts with hyperlinks and make the positioning extra pleasant for creators and publishers. Bier denied that hyperlinks are de-boosted on X’s timeline now, however mentioned they do “have decrease engagement and we try to repair that.”
“In the event you’re a author or journalist who left X within the final couple years, coming again could possibly be the most important arbitrage alternative of your profession,” he wrote.
As soon as the web water cooler of digital media, X now drives much less referral site visitors for publishers than it beforehand did, whereas X’s personal utilization knowledge launched earlier this yr suggests a decline in time spent on the app. Shops like PBS, NPR, and The Guardian have stopped posting there altogether, as information influencers and journalists have turned to options like Bluesky, Substack, LinkedIn, and Threads to construct their on-line audiences.
As social media corporations adapt to a altering panorama, UX and UI adjustments may also help nudge customers in the direction of new behaviors (see Meta’s push into vertical video or upgrades to its DMs). For X, a change to the expertise of clicking hyperlinks and interacting with articles on its app may assist make it extra welcoming to the writers and readers who powered Twitter in its heyday.
