X restores link headlines — sort of

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has restored headlines to link previews included in posts — though it’s still not a great design for news organizations looking to share content.

The changes started rolling out in early 2024, with the Elon Musk-owned platform moving the link’s domain name below the preview picture along with adding the word “from.” 

The headline itself is now shown on top of the image itself in a rather small black box.

It appears that older posts created under the old method have been retroactively converted to the new format.

While this does restore one of the most controversial removals — that headline itself — it’s still not all that prominent. 

Many X users found past posts with links losing there context without it being clear a link was included and without any preview of the headline.

Previously, Twitter and X used what were known as “cards” that would be embedded in most tweets or posts with links.

The new design still has some significant design issues:

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• Like with the headline-less design, some users may not understand the photo and headline are clickable.
• In some ways, the new headline design looks more like a caption than a headline.
• The addition of “From (domainname.com)” does add at least one signal that embedded content might be a link, though it’s arguably not all that clear.
• In most cases, the headline being on top of the image means it covers more than the simple domain name label; this means that images, including ones used in old posts, may have much of the lower portion of them obscured in certain views. In the example above, the CNBC logo gets partially covered by the headline.

X still doesn’t seem keen on the whole idea of users clicking off-site, which was reportedly one of the driving factors behind doing away with cards when it was announced in October 2023. It has also adjusted its algorithm to purportedly de-emphasize posts with links, though it’s not clear if any changes to that have been made with the UI update.

X no longer has a media relations department and inquiries sent to its communications team email receive a generic autoreply.

The headlines do not appear on the native iOS app; with the domain-name only label remaining in place. It’s not clear if this is because the feature is still rolling out, but even over a week after launch it’s still not showing headlines. This could be, at least in part, due to space concerns because photos are much smaller on mobile, and therefore, a headline could end up covering even more of the image.

At appears that some tweets with URLs in them have started to display a clickable link again on desktop, but not mobile apps. This means that the only solution to still “force” a clickable URL to appear in a post appears to be including it in the middle of a post — with content both before or after it, as the example CNBC post show does.