Musk’s X appoints ‘king of virality’ in bid to spice up development | EUROtoday

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Getty Images Nikita Bier, wearing a grey, button-up shirt with a microphone attached, speaks on-stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2013.Getty Images

Elon Musk has appointed a product developer liable 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 often called Twitter – that it ought to make use of him.

“I’ve officially posted my way to the top,” 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 latest rivals Bluesky and Threads.

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

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

“Getting that knack for what consumers want, and Gen Z users in particular, is precisely what X needs right now to turn things around, as all is not lost for the once-greatest social network,” he instructed the BBC.

Successful – and controversial

A former scholar on the University 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 honest”), 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 Gas was purchased by Discord, after it climbed up US app obtain charts.

Venture capital agency Lightspeed referred to Mr Bier because the “king of virality” when he joined them as an advisor final 12 months.

But 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 during which tbh’s founders instructed Facebook colleagues, post-acquisition, of “a psychological trick” that might 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 “the most important social network in the world”.

“While I already spend every waking hour on this app, I’ll now be spending that time helping others unlock that same value,” he mentioned.

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

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

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

But in response to Pew Research Centre findings printed in December, 17% of US mentioned they use X – down from 23% in 2022 and 33% a decade in the past.

Talent tensions

The appointment of Mr Bier at X comes at a time when tech corporations are jostling for prime workers, specifically sought-after engineers, to spearhead their AI improvement.

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

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

One OpenAI government likened the corporate’s method to its workers with large compensation gives to a break-in, in response to an inside memo seen by Wired.

Mark Chen, its chief analysis officer, reportedly mentioned he was working with OpenAI boss Sam Altman on “creative ways to recognise and reward top talent”.

The BBC has requested OpenAI for remark.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78nnxv3lppo