After testing it out over the past month, X has now launched its new expanded profile bio display to X Premium users on the web.
NEWS: Expanded Bios are now live on the web! pic.twitter.com/tQzjaDiQs7
— X News Daily (@xDaily) October 11, 2023
As you can see in this example, shared by X News Daily, now, when you visit a profile that has the expanded profile option available, you’ll be able to tap on a “View more” prompt to get more info about that user.
That’ll provide more room to explain what you, or your company, is about, or interested in, while you’ll also have more space to provide, say, your personal mission statement, or to publish your manifesto for life, etc.
The bigger profile section could also eventually incorporate shops, job listings, location info, etc., as part of X’s broader plan to provide more interactive options in the app.
Indeed, according to a recent code update in the app, the expanded profile bios will also provide X with more data to better customize its job recommendations and ad personalization in-stream.
So it seems more geared towards individuals, and essentially enabling users to add a LinkedIn-style bio in the app, with a view to building X’s capacity on this front. But it still could have implications for brands, especially if X looks to use this extra information for algorithmic matching and recommendations.
Essentially, if you are going to use this, you probably want to add in relevant keywords that X’s system can latch onto, in order to not only show you more relevant recommendations in the app, but to also ensure that your profile is displayed in related search activity.
It’s not clear exactly how X will look to use such, but presumably, once it has this data, it’ll find more ways to add it into its contextual matching engines, which could make it a valuable internal SEO tool.
Though it’s still somewhat limited at this stage. At present, the option appears to be only available to X Premium or Verification for Business subscribers in the web version of the app.
But X has been pushing these updates out fairly quickly, so an expanded rollout will likely be coming soon, though whether that also includes non-paying users remains to be seen.
It’s another element in the gradual extension of X content, which also includes longer posts and longer video uploads, as part of Elon’s broader plan to re-shape the app into a more all-inclusive content and facilitation tool.
It’s not clear yet whether users are as open to such, or if building it will entice expanded use. But you have to start somewhere, and by providing more options, X is expanding its foundations across a broader range of content formats and uses.