How X tries to win over influencers

Like Twitter, the social media company has struggled to find its niche for influencers. While YouTube had pranksters and beauty gurus, and Instagram fashionistas and travel bloggers, Twitter had grumpy journalists, political flame wars and niche humor. Before Mr. Musk took over, the company engaged in several ways to attract creators. It provided funding for aspiring podcasters to create shows on the audio discussion feature Spaces, and tapped digital artists during the 2022 NFT boom.

“We are all in a war for people's time,” Mr. Weitz said.

Some of the creators X hopes to reach are skeptical about the potential revenue. Jimmy Donaldson, the YouTuber known as MrBeast, said in December that sharing his videos on “My videos cost millions to make, and even if they got a billion views on X, it wouldn't fund a fraction of that,” he says. said in a message.

But this month, Mr. Donaldson decided to experiment and shared one of his old YouTube videos on X. The post was viewed 169 million times and earned him $263,655. “It's a bit of a facade,” he said in a message. “Advertisers saw the attention it got and bought ads on my video (I think) and so my revenue per view is probably higher than what you would experience.”

Because its paid creator partnerships are new and relatively untested,

“Our feeling was that it was a great gamble. Do we have any guarantees or anything like that? No, we don't,” said Peter Micelli, the CEO of Range Media Partners, which represents Mr. Rome, the sports radio host. “They know they have to give artists a benefit or it won't work.”

Ryan Mac contributed reporting from Los Angeles.