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

Liv McMahonTechnology reporterGetty ImagesElon Musk has appointed a product developer answerable for a number of profitable youth-focused social media apps to a senior function at X.Nikita Bier has been made X’s head of product three years after publicly suggesting on the platform – then referred to as Twitter – that it ought to make use of him.”I’ve formally posted my approach to the highest,” he wrote in a put up on X saying the function.X has been on a rollercoaster trip because it was purchased by the world’s richest man for $44bn (£38.1bn) in October 2022.It has confronted issues with advertisers, seen excessive profile customers stop and wrestled with the emergence of recent rivals Bluesky and Threads.Nevertheless, consultants say Mr Bier’s appointment may increase its prospects with a key demographic.Drew Benvie, chief government 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 may deliver some “X-factor” to the platform.”Getting that knack for what customers need, and Gen Z customers specifically, is exactly what X wants proper now to show issues round, as all is just not misplaced for the once-greatest social community,” he informed the BBC.Profitable – and controversialA former pupil 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 sincere”), 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 final 12 months.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 informed Fb colleagues, post-acquisition, of “a psychological trick” that may very well 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 “a very powerful social community on the planet”. “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 facility” 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 in accordance with Pew Analysis Centre findings printed in December, 17% of US mentioned they use X – down from 23% in 2022 and 33% a decade in the past.Expertise tensionsThe appointment of Mr Bier at X comes at a time when tech companies are jostling for high employees, particularly sought-after engineers, to spearhead their AI growth.Mark Zuckerberg introduced a brand new “superintelligence” group at Meta on Monday, after stories it had focused OpenAI employees with $100m-plus compensation provides.It consists of 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 government likened the corporate’s method to its employees with big compensation provides to a break-in, in accordance with an inside 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.