Hold onto your hats, folks! X has just gifted its most prolific posters – journalists, creators, and the notoriously long-winded venture capitalists! A fresh way to inform their audiences: long-form ‘Articles’.
Think of it as Twitter’s answer to self-indulgent blog posts. With a basic text editor (because who needs fancy formatting?), the ability to embed media, and even bulleted lists, you can now unleash your unfiltered thoughts upon your unlucky followers.
X’s official Write account has shared the not-so-good news with the following post:
— Write (@Write) March 7, 2024
What’s this all about?
Officially, X is calling Articles “a new way to write and share long-form content”.
When you’re finally ready to bless the world with your masterpiece, your Article gets its own special tab on your profile and blasts out to your followers’ timelines.
They even have a unique icon and layout… Because nothing says ‘important content‘ like a slightly different design.
Articles promise to obliterate the existing character limits, boasting a capacity of up to 100,000 characters (that’s about 15,000 words of pure, unadulterated content…brace yourselves).
Who gets to play with this new toy?
Sadly, you need to be a Premium+ subscriber or a ‘Verified Organization‘ to access Articles. The rest of us will just have to keep squeezing our life-changing insights into those restrictive character counts.
An X Premium+ subscription starts at $16/month or $168/year on the web but regional prices may affect how much you are going to pay for posting long-form articles on X.
You may check X Premium+’s regional pricing options here.
It was on talks for a long time
Funny enough, this self-important feature was in the works long before Elon Musk seized the reins. Initially dubbed ‘Notes‘ the goal was to lure wannabe thought leaders and newsletter writers to the platform.
Of course, Musk confirmed last summer that this particular tool was still on the agenda.
Considering Musk’s well-known hostility towards journalists (remember the Substack suppression and disappearing news headlines?), the launch of these publishing tools is, shall we say… interesting.
It seems our favorite tech mogul wants to ensure an endless stream of content on his platform, even if it means giving a megaphone to the very people he loves to criticize.
Featured image credit: Daria Glakteeva/Unsplash.
