Musk's X appoints 'king of virality' in bid to draw in younger users

Elon Musk has appointed a product developer responsible for several successful youth-focused social media apps to a senior role at X.

Nikita Bier has been made X's head of product three years after publicly suggesting on the platform - then known as Twitter - that it should employ him.

"I've officially posted my way to the top," he wrote in a post on X announcing the role.

X has been on a rollercoaster ride since it was bought by the world's richest man for $44bn (£38.1bn) in October 2022.

It has faced problems with advertisers, seen high profile users quit and wrestled with the emergence of new rivals Bluesky and Threads.

A former student at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr Bier grew to prominence after launching a slew of anonymous apps aimed at teens.

These included tbh (an acronym for "to be honest"), a platform allowing US high school students to participate in anonymous, friendly polls. It was acquired by Meta in 2017.

In 2023, his compliments-focused app Gas was bought by Discord, after it climbed up US app download charts.

Venture capital firm Lightspeed referred to Mr Bier as the "king of virality" when he joined them as an advisor last year.

But the means by which Bier's now defunct app tbh reportedly targeted younger users were also somewhat controversial.

Buzzfeed reported in 2018 that it had obtained a memo in which tbh's founders told Facebook colleagues, post-acquisition, of "a psychological trick" that could be used to amass teen sign-ups.

It included scouring Instagram for high school students' accounts, it said.

In his post 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 said.

This would include "leveraging the power" of X's generative AI chatbot Grok to develop "hyper-relevant timelines," he added.

X's usage and popularity has fluctuated under Musk's leadership of the platform.

He said in March that the platform had more than 600m monthly active users.

But according to Pew Research Centre findings published in December, 17% of US said they use X - down from 23% in 2022 and 33% a decade ago.

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