Whether or not you prefer it or not, the platform previously generally known as Twitter is about to take one other vital step away from its earlier identification, by implementing a significant UI replace that’ll take away all response buttons from the principle view, as a substitute hiding them behind action-based cues.

Final month, X proprietor Elon Musk confirmed that his new imaginative and prescient for the app UI is coming, which is able to see the reply, like and re-share buttons faraway from X posts in-feed, leaving solely the full view depend and time posted for every.

Now, X has additionally provided a preview of how customers will have interaction with posts inside this new system:

As you possibly can see on this instance, shared by X engineer Christopher Stanley, with the brand new, stripped-back feed UI, customers might want to faucet and maintain on a submit to convey up the motion buttons. You’ll then have the ability to work together with the submit by way of all the same old choices.

Customers will even have the ability to swipe to answer or Like a submit even sooner, which means that every one the present choices will nonetheless be obtainable, even when they’re not offered proper earlier than your eyes.

Which looks as if an pointless change, and a giant shift for X customers to get used to. However Musk says that it’s going to make the feed “very clean”, whereas additionally guaranteeing optimum use of pixels on the X interface.

However I don’t know. At a guess, I’d assume that it will scale back total engagement within the app, as a result of customers received’t have the choices so available, and plenty of received’t have any thought of easy methods to use these new engagement course of.

Certainly, that’s precisely what occurred again in 2020, within the lead-up to the U.S. election, when Twitter determined to take away the choice to retweet posts completely for U.S. customers, as a part of a broader effort to fight the amplification of false stories. Individuals may nonetheless quote tweet, however the removing of an instantly current retweet button triggered a 20% discount in tweet sharing total.

As a result of the button wasn’t there, so it was now not as straightforward to make use of. And consequently, individuals simply didn’t hassle looking for an alternate answer.

I think that this replace may have an identical impression, a minimum of within the fast time period, although X appears assured that folks will get used to the brand new UI, and can finally adapt accordingly.

However once more, I don’t know.

It may, nevertheless, additionally handle a key, lingering concern, in that the retweet possibility does make it too straightforward to amplify content material. That, in the long run, may find yourself being a constructive, but it surely’s unlikely to assist X drive extra engagement or curiosity.

Which is what it actually wants proper now.

X has been sitting on 250 million each day lively customers for 17 months and counting, whereas numerous stories counsel that X is regularly shedding its viewers, as Threads continues to achieve. X’s person depend isn’t plummeting, however in response to its newest E.U. disclosure assertion, for instance, X misplaced nearly one million lively customers within the area over the previous six months.

Which, once you’re speaking about 250 million each day actives, isn’t a giant deal, but it surely’s this sort of sluggish leakage which may level to Threads, and different real-time social options, stunting X’s progress. And finally, doubtlessly, reversing it.

Add to this the truth that X’s advert income consumption is reportedly nonetheless down 50% on earlier ranges, and it’s arduous to see why these manufacturers is perhaps trying to come again, if X isn’t rising, and isn’t seemingly providing new alternatives.

An total decline in person engagement can be one other blow, however perhaps, there’s a longer-term imaginative and prescient for the app that solely Elon can see, which is able to make weathering the preliminary blowback simply one other bump within the street.

Elon’s unique projections noticed X reaching 600 million customers by 2025, on its path to turning into a billion-user app.

Possibly that’s nonetheless doable, but it surely’s arduous to see as but.

However then once more, if Elon can get a further $6 billion in funding for xAI, which is a subsidiary of X Corp, that may additionally present extra capital to maintain X going for some time but.