Social Throwback 2023: The year Elon Musk’s X transformed to bring in advertisers

The year for the micro-blogging platform called ‘Twitter’ started with a new owner - Elon Musk and halfway through 2023, the platform lost its identity for being recognised as the blue Twitter bird. Musk announced the move through a tweet that read, ‘And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.’

This extensive revamp, with the legacy blue bird being replaced with the letter X and the controversial takes from Elon Musk led to some of the biggest ad spenders to pull out due to uncertainty.

It led to a 50% drop in advertising revenue, having been confirmed by Elon Musk himself. However, 2023 can be known as the year when Elon Musk attempted to not only appease advertisers to return to X but also to lure users to spend more money on the previously free site.

Advertiser incentives 

Towards the end of 2022, a report claimed that Musk plans to offer advertisers ‘generous incentives’ to return to the platform. It seemed to have appeased a few advertisers. 

In recent developments, X has once again faced backlash from advertisers as Musk was found agreeing to posts propagating far-right content like ‘white pride’ and ‘anti-semitism’. A Media Matters report revealed that IBM, Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal and multiple other companies had their ads posted besides posts by users that have pro-Nazi and pro-Hitler content. Advertisers like Apple, Disney, and IBM have since stopped their ad spends on the platform. 

Ad revenue sharing for creators

To make up for its lost revenue, the platform expanded its creator monetization offering to include ad revenue sharing for creators. According to the updates, select content creators on the social media platform were eligible to get a part of the advertising revenue the company earns. 

The criteria for eligible monetization stated that users have to be subscribed to Twitter Blue or Verified Organization and have at least five million impressions on their posts in each of the last three months. The platform then lowered the minimum payout threshold from $50 to $10 and a minimum impressions requirement will now be five million views within three months instead of the 15 million listed before and open X’s ad revenue sharing worldwide. 

Despite his constant efforts to ensure users are engaged through revenue-sharing payouts and advertisers are consistent with their investments in the platform, the platform is set to bring in roughly $2.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2023, as per Bloomberg. 

X generated a little more than $600 million in advertising revenue in each of the first three quarters of the year, which is a slump compared to more than $1 billion per quarter in 2022. 

We highlight all the developments that took place on X (Twitter) in 2023.

January 2023

• Twitter partners with ad tech companies, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (IAS) on brand safety initiative on January 25 to tell advertisers if their ad is placed around inappropriate content. The program becomes available for U.S.-based advertising campaigns.
• Rolls out its bookmark feature on iOS: The design displays the button under the expanded tweet view, making it easier to add a post to bookmarks.
• Bans third-party clients: The platform cut off app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific and updated its developer terms to ban third-party clients altogether on January 19.

February 2023

• In its fourth round of cuts, Twitter lays off more than 200 employees.
• The platform shuts down free access to its API on February 9 and charges $100 per month for the basic tier of API. 
• Introduces 4,000-character tweets for Blue subscribers on February 8. 
• Elon Musk introduces ad revenue for creators in a tweet on February 3 but mentions that eligible users must be signed up for Twitter Blue.
• Twitter Blue expands to new countries, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. 
• Launches a new Spaces tab with curated stations for live and recorded spaces, along with podcasts. 
• Discontinues CoTweets, a feature that allows two users to co-author a tweet. 

March 2023

• Announces new API tiers; free- meant for content posting bots, basic - costs $100 per month and enterprise levels
• Elon Musk says Twitter will only show verified accounts on its ‘For You’ timeline starting April 15.
• Twitter announces the removal of legacy blue checks on April 1 for users who are not subscribed to Twitter Blue.
• Twitter Blue is available in more than 20 countries including Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus.

April 2023

• Twitter shows labels on tweets with reduced visibility. It reads as ‘Visibility limited: this Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct.’ The platform says no ads will be placed adjacent to such tweets.
• Twitter restores the Blue verification mark for top accounts with more than one million followers, even if they don’t pay for Twitter Blue.
• Twitter says verified checkmarks are required to continue running ads on the platform.
• Officially removes legacy blue checkmarks on April 20. If a user is a Blue subscriber, their label reads, ‘This account is verified because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue and verified their phone number.’
• Microsoft drops Twitter from its advertising platform starting April 25. Elon Musk threatened to take legal action.
• Twitter says it will label tweets that get downranked for violating its hate speech policy.
• The platform allows Blue subscribers to post 10,000-character-long posts.
• Twitter, Inc. gets merged into X Corp.
• Twitter users reported a bug on April 10 in which Circle tweets are surfacing on the algorithmically generated For You timeline. 
• Twitter Blue subscribers to be shown 50% of ads in their timeline compared to non-paid users and a visibility boost in search on the platform.

May 2023

• Twitter launches Community Notes for images in posts by allowing users to address scenarios of morphed images or AI-generated images across the platform where the photos are posted. 
• Introduces a new API tier which costs $5,000 per month.
• Blue subscribers can upload two-hour videos with the video file size limit for paid users being increased from 2GB to 8GB. 
• Elon Musk tweets that he has found a new CEO; NBCU’s Linda Yaccarino subsequently becomes the next CEO of Twitter. 
• Twitter allows users to react to direct messages with emojis.
• Purges old inactive accounts to free up desired usernames.
• A bug causes legacy blue checks to reappear by updating the bio.

June 2023

• Twitter starts rolling out a new version of the web app to users on July 3, where users have to be verified to access TweetDeck. 
• Twitter limits the number of tweets users can read in a day. Verified account holders can read a maximum of 6,000 posts daily, while unverified users have a limit of 600 posts. 
• Users need an account to view tweets.
• Subscribers can post 25,000-character-long tweets.
• The time limit to edit tweets increases from 30 minutes to one hour for Blue subscribers.
• Linda Yaccarino is officially the CEO of Twitter on June 5.

July 2023

• Twitter officially shares ad revenue with verified creators. Blue subscribers who have earned more than 5 million tweet impressions each month for the three months are said to be eligible to join the creator payouts.
• Twitter rebrands to X. The iconic bird logo gets replaced with the letter ‘X’ following July 22. 
• Apple accepts the app’s rebrand to X in the app store.
• X opens up its ad revenue-sharing program globally.
• The platform works on a job listing feature.

August 2023

• X allows paid users to hide their checkmarks to help users benefit from subscription features without showing that they are verified accounts. 
• X announces it will collect users’ biometric data along with education and job history on September 29.
• The platform allows paid users to hide their likes.
• X lifts the ban on political ads.
• The platform announces it would offer a one-time ad credit of $250 to select businesses when they spend $1,000 or more on new ad campaigns.
• Musk confirms the platform’s plan to hide news links to ‘improve the aesthetics’.
• The ‘block’ feature gets deleted, except for DMs.
• X sorts posts by like counts: Posts (formerly called tweets), appear in chronological order on profiles when users are logged into the platform, but once they log out, they are sorted by performance.
• Rolls out a new ‘Highlights’ tab for paid users.
• TweetDeck is renamed to XPro and becomes a subscriber-only feature. 
• It lowers requirements for its creator payout program and says that creators who have garnered five million impressions in the last three months will be eligible for ad revenue sharing. 
• Video calls will be a new feature coming to the platform, as part of its transformation into an ‘everything app.’

September 2023

• Audio and video calls will be available to premium subscribers.
• Musk suggests that X may no longer be a free site, claiming it would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots.
• Users notice that X is running unlabeled ads in the Following feeds.
• Community Notes is available for videos on X.

October 2023

• A report from Similarweb claims that X traffic and monthly active users are down 14% YoY in September. 
• X tests its three premium tiers - ‘Premium Basic’, ‘Premium Standard’ and ‘Premium Plus’ plans, which will show full ads, half the ads or no ads, respectively., as per CEO Linda Yaccarino on October 5.
• X shuts down its Circles feature on October 31, which allowed users to post to a small, exclusive audience similar to Instagram’s Close Friends.
• X requires users to answer a question before joining private Communities to help admins and moderators decide who should be able to join and offer some protection against spammers and bots.
• X limits replies to verified users, however, it is not restricted to premium accounts. Users who don’t pay for X Premium can also choose to not let non-verified users reply to their posts.

November 2023

• X officially introduces a job search tool in a bid to become the everything app’. Verified Organizations can post job listings that users can then search through by keyword and location. 
• X brings headline preview links back to the platform.
• X files a lawsuit for defamation against Media Matters over claims that major companies like IBM, Apple and Oracle have their ads appearing next to antisemitic content. 
• Major X advertisers pause spending again after Musk endorses an antisemitic post. They include Apple, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, IBM, Paramount Global, Lionsgate, European Commission, and Walmart. In response, Musk tells advertisers to ‘go fuck yourself.’  

December 2023

• X goes after small and medium-sized businesses after losing major advertisers.
• xAI’s chatbot ‘Grok’ launches to X Premium+ subscribers in the US. It is accessible to all English language users who are subscribed to Premium+. Grok is priced at $16 per month, significantly more expensive than the Basic ($3/mo) and Premium ($8/mo) options.
• X brings video to Spaces in an attempt to get users to further engage with their audience without having to go to a third-party platform. Musk said X plans to launch the feature by the end of the year, or ‘early next year.’