X (yes, Twitter) is broken. It is broken because people have rigged the monetization system. In the past, I used to get value for my business research on Twitter where I could type something, and get some views about that topic.
But today, the results I get are totally uncorrelated with my search. Why? They have taken XEO (X Engine Optimization) to a new level. Simply, you can write any nonsense and hashtag trends so that when people search those trends, you show on the search, and by showing on the search, if you are a monetized account, you make money when those visitors see ads!
So, consider this tweet or whatever it is called now: “We are traveling to Umuahia tomorrow for the group meeting #Obama Biden Ukraine INEC …”. You can list and tag unrelated things, which are trending at that time. Now, when people search for “INEC”, this post shows up. Notice that this post has nothing to do with INEC.
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Why is this happening? Incentives. People want more visitors for those monetizing their accounts, and they’re pushing noise into the platform to bring traffic. Without the money, this would not have happened. They would have focused on hashtagging Umuahia alone! Elon Musk and team must fix this, because its search is broken.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: This is not completely the case.
The issue with deliberately misplaced hashtags has been a thing before Musk took over and long before monetization was activated.
The Twitter Trend Table has always been a powerful section of the app, and long before Musk came in, users will do anything to appear on the trend table, and in many cases where they could not, they just simply place the trending tags for the day in their tweets to drive more traffic and visibility to their post.
(The trend table gives informal communities with similar interest, geography, and activity pattern a sense of what the top conversation for the day is. And it drives tons of traffic to the top 10 tags on it daily.)
It’s something that has been prominent and I have personally been irritated by before Musk took over.
If anything, maybe the behaviour just got worse since you can now earn from those views.
Comment 1R: This is correct. However, like Ndubuisi Ekekwe opined, X or Twitter is completely broken. I had mentioned this earlier on that oftentimes trends lead you to totally unrelated posts. It used to be there in the pre-Musk era but it is now completely a metastasized cancer.
Comment 1R: Your last paragraph is what’s happening actually. The behavior has changed because of monetization. People will do anything now to get that.
My Response: Great point there. I think it is the scale that is the issue now as there is a clear monetary incentive to do it
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It is not only X, it’s a major epidemic across all social, including LinkedIn here. That of X is a unique case because when you decide to reward people based on how loud their noises (views) are, you will get so much deafening noises, and that is what is currently playing out. Elon Musk in a bid to ramp up number of paid subscribers ended up rewarding people for the wrong reasons.
How can you value people based on likes and views and expect sanity or quality engagements? It is counterintuitive, and probably counterproductive.
Tiktok brought something not quite good to the social media and content creation universe, and in a bid to compete or remain relevant, every social media platform might end up losing its essence.
If you post a complete nonsense and get surprised with millions of views and thousands of likes, what will be the incentive to post actual substance that can really be useful? None.
Once we all get fed up, we will go back to the basics.