I’m not sure that this will make a big difference, and I would love to see the stats on how many X (formerly Twitter) users are actually using the “For You” feed, as opposed to the “Following” option. But X is currently working on a new display which would ensure that your followers are shown your pinned posts in the app, via a new, dedicated breakout display in-stream.
As you can see in this example, shared by X engineer Enrique Barragan, the new display would show your pinned posts to your followers via a side-scrolling update feed, which would be inserted into the “For You” listing.
It’s not clear if the same unit would be displayed in the “Following” feed also, but the idea is that if you’re highlighting your best posts by pinning them, ensuring that your audience sees them should help to increase overall engagement.
Though I’m not sure that it’ll actually work that way in practice.
The concept was actually suggested by X owner Elon Musk last month, who proclaimed that:
A change is coming to our recommendation algorithm that will ensure that all your followers see your pinned posts.
This only applies to one pinned post every ~48 hours to prevent gaming of the system.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2024
So, I’m not sure that this would necessarily mean that all of your followers end up seeing your pinned posts, as they would seemingly need to scroll through this unit for that to happen. And for users who follow a lot of profiles, that could be a lot of posts to swipe through, even with the noted limit of one pinned post, per profile every 48 hours to be featured.
Not everyone’s going to pin posts, of course, and X’s own data shows that only 20% of its users ever post anything at all in the app, reducing the potential usage of the feature by a lot. But the non-intuitive, side-scrolling unit seems like a compromise in what Musk initially pledged on this, in terms of visibility.
Though I guess X would essentially be facilitating broader reach, if users choose to use it?
In any event, I’m not sure that this will end up being an amazing addition for general users, though for those looking to get more reach and traction, it could be another consideration in your X posting strategy.
It could be that competition for space in these display units ends up being high, depending on how many people each of your followers also follow, but it could also be very low in many cases, which could then help you gain more traction and reach.
On balance, my assumption would be that this ends up being a minor element, but for those who are posting regularly on X, and are looking for growth strategies, it’ll definitely be worth an experiment.
As Barragan notes, the new display is currently in limited testing, and will be rolling out more broadly soon.
