Yaccarino’s Insight into X’s Progress

What is Yaccarino’s Insight Into X’s Progress?

Elon Musk has been in charge of former Twitter or X for over nine months.

He has seen a raft of changes implemented in the app that includes UI tweaks and functional updates. He has also expanded options for paying subscribers, policy shifts, and many more.

Marking the new milestone today, X CEO Linda Yaccarino has been in the role for only two months. Still, she has taken the opportunity to credit her new team for their progress in developing the app, in alignment with Musk’s vision.

Yaccarino says she has seen many upgrades shipped in challenging circumstances. Yaccarino also states that they are building the future of X, and according to her, the pace of innovation speaks for itself.

She further states that they achieved a lot in nine months and will achieve more next year. She is thankful to all the teams and partners making it happen daily.

She further addresses all the passionate and growing communities of movie buffs, sports fanatics, and tech trailblazers worldwide and says that the future of X belongs to YOU – blaze your glory!

The latter note references Twitter’s new ‘Blaze Your Glory’ tagline. Whether intentional or not, it refers to dying in a hail of gunfire.

To underline the team’s progress, Yaccarino has published 73 critical updates that the X team has rolled out under Musk.

It looks impressive, especially considering that the X team has done all this with 80% fewer staff after Musk’s mass culling or purge of all the prominent former Twitter employees.

But on closer scrutiny, it is not an entirely accurate representation of new work being done at the app.

The vast majority of these projects were in development before Musk came in. It includes Community Notes, Subscriptions, view counts, long-form posts, and many more.

Most of these, as Musk himself has acknowledged, were already close to launch. But all these projects were still awaiting the green light from the previous management.

They are not precisely new updates that the much smaller X team has fully implemented.

By my count, of the 73 updates Yaccarino has listed, just 12 of them are new. It includes the updated Twitter Blue, also now the ‘X Blue’ verification program with longer video uploads.

It is the launch of its new ad revenue share program. This program covers bookmark counts, voice and video calls, the Highlights tab, improved video playback, and job listings.

The rest of these innovations are either repeatedly mentioned in the list, were already developed by the previous Twitter team, or are not key upgrades, like rate limits or the launch of its watered-down transparency report, minor video functionality changes, and more.

So only 16% of these listed upgrades are new elements. It is still in progress and remains impressive with so few staff left in the building.

But nobody might have seen a platform so keen to pat itself on the back. If that is what you are doing, you probably want to ensure that these are valuable and relevant enhancements for which you claim responsibility.

The real challenge now, however, is what X will do next. Only so many shelved elements from Twitter 1.0 are waiting to be launched. Whatever comes from now on is being wholly built by Elon’s new X team.

As such, the changes rolled out moving forward will more closely reflect Elon’s vision for the app. It will give us a better idea of how they can manage such with their skeleton crew.

Many have been predicting that, at some stage, Musk’s deep staff cuts will undoubtedly hinder the app.

But still, Yaccarino is proud to highlight that it has yet to happen. But it will be interesting to see how this list develops over the next nine months and what it shows of X’s new development approach.

You can read about Yaccarino’s complete list of X achievements here.

Click here for more updates on the X app and other prominent social media platforms.