Musk’s X appoints ‘king of virality’ in bid to boost growth

Elon Musk has appointed a product developer chargeable for a number of profitable youth-focused social media apps to a senior position at X.

Nikita Bier has been made X’s head of product three years after publicly suggesting on the platform – then often called Twitter – that it ought to make use of him.

“I’ve formally posted my technique to the highest,” he wrote in a post on X asserting the position.

X has been on a rollercoaster journey because it was purchased by the world’s richest man for $44bn (£38.1bn) in October 2022.

It has confronted problems with advertisers, seen high profile users quit and wrestled with the emergence of latest rivals Bluesky and Threads.

Nevertheless, consultants say Mr Bier’s appointment might enhance its prospects with a key demographic.

Drew Benvie, chief govt of social media consultancy Battenhall, mentioned Mr Bier’s expertise in creating options that interact youthful customers, like nameless polling, makes him hopeful his arrival might deliver some “X-factor” to the platform.

“Getting that knack for what shoppers need, and Gen Z customers particularly, is exactly what X wants proper now to show issues round, as all is just not misplaced for the once-greatest social community,” he instructed the BBC.

Social media skilled Matt Navarra mentioned providing “recent vitality for youthful customers” within the type of extra interactive, immersive and optimistic content material can be key.

However he added that whereas “rebooting product considering” may gain advantage the platform, translating it into materials development and retainment of youthful customers would require extra speedy adjustments corresponding to extra content material codecs, model security controls and monetisation choices for creators.

A former scholar on the College of California, Berkeley, Mr Bier grew to prominence after launching a slew of nameless apps aimed toward teenagers.

These included tbh (an acronym for “to be trustworthy”), a platform permitting US highschool college students to take part in nameless, pleasant polls. It was acquired by Meta in 2017.

In 2023, his compliments-focused app Gasoline was purchased by Discord, after it climbed up US app obtain charts.

Enterprise capital agency Lightspeed referred to Mr Bier because the “king of virality” when he joined them as an advisor last year.

However the means by which Bier’s now defunct app tbh reportedly focused youthful customers had been additionally considerably controversial.

Buzzfeed reported in 2018 that it had obtained a memo through which tbh’s founders instructed Fb colleagues, post-acquisition, of “a psychological trick” that could possibly be used to amass teen sign-ups.

It included scouring Instagram for highschool college students’ accounts, it mentioned.

In his put up on X Mr Bier described his new employer as “crucial social community on the earth”.

“Whereas I already spend each waking hour on this app, I am going to now be spending that point serving to others unlock that very same worth,” he mentioned.

This would come with “leveraging the ability” of X’s generative AI chatbot Grok to develop “hyper-relevant timelines,” he added.

X’s utilization and recognition has fluctuated underneath Musk’s management of the platform.

He mentioned in March that the platform had greater than 600m month-to-month energetic customers.

However based on Pew Analysis Centre findings published in December, 17% of US mentioned they use X – down from 23% in 2022 and 33% a decade in the past.

The appointment of Mr Bier at X comes at a time when tech companies are jostling for high workers, particularly sought-after engineers, to spearhead their AI growth.

Mark Zuckerberg introduced a brand new “superintelligence” staff at Meta on Monday, after studies it had focused OpenAI workers with $100m-plus compensation offers.

It contains Nat Friedman, former boss of software program growth platform GitHub, Alexandr Wang of knowledge annotation agency Scale AI and co-creators of OpenAI’s fashions.

One OpenAI govt likened the corporate’s method to its workers with enormous compensation affords to a break-in, according to an internal memo seen by Wired.

Mark Chen, its chief analysis officer, reportedly mentioned he was working with OpenAI boss Sam Altman on “inventive methods to recognise and reward high expertise”.

The BBC has requested OpenAI for remark.