★ X Once Again Marks the Spot

Upon taking the CEO helm last month, John Ternus began tweeting on X . He tweeted “ hello ”, posted an iPhone event eve teaser and then a promo video for the new products, celebrated Apple’s plethora of wins at the Emmys and launch day on Fifth Avenue , and commemorated the anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death . X is the only place these posts go. Same for Greg Joswiak’s account . Lighthearted stuff too, like Cook “introducing” Ternus to Pikachu back in August . You may not like it that X has re-found its footing under Elon Musk’s ownership, but it has. I’m citing Apple executives here but they’re far from alone. There are hundreds of interesting people and accounts I follow that post on X very regularly and do not post anywhere else at all. As a word nerd I love Merriam-Webster’s account — fun, clever, smart posts every day. That’s just one example among hundreds. Here’s another . Fascinating new apps are being shown and discussed on X and nowhere else. I see more interesting posts on X than I do on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon combined. I wish that weren’t so but it is. Most people don’t want to think about politics so they don’t. Those people, when they want to participate in a Twitter-like social network, go to X. And I can’t blame anyone. The only network that compares to X, size-wise, is Threads — but Threads’s algorithm is weirder than X’s now, and the content I see there is relatively boring. My Threads timeline is full of engagement bait without being engaging.