Earlier this month, AT&T Chief Communications Officer Krista Pilot joined my class and asked my students which platforms they're using these days. X kept coming up.
So I asked a question I didn't expect to ask a group of communications students in 2026: is X cool again? Yes, they told me, it's actually a pretty good source for information.
Then at SF Tech Week, X was the most talked-about platform on the ground, and more than one person told me they just don't do LinkedIn. John Gruber of Daring Fireball said it in five words earlier this month:
"The action is on X." — John Gruber, Daring Fireball
So what exactly is happening on X and do you need to care?
With its marketing, X is leaning into what made the platform special in the first place: an open medium where anyone can reach anyone. A level playing field for ideas.
The reality is that the people who always loved X stayed on X. That includes tech leaders who think and build in public, like Jason Fried of 37signals and Aaron Levie of Box. They stayed because the thing they valued, an open conversation with direct reach, never went anywhere, even as a lot else about the platform changed.
The conversation around AI is now pulling new people onto the platform. Builders, researchers and investors are working out what these tools mean in public, in close to real time, and that debate lives on X. If you want to follow it, you go where it's happening.
Journalists are still active there. Communicators are missing. Non-tech leaders are missing as well. I can say that with a fair degree of confidence because I checked manually. Many still have accounts, but a striking number haven't posted in three years or more. A notable exception is Microsoft's Frank X. Shaw, who has been consistently active on X as a communicator for years, though he recently announced he's leaving Microsoft at the end of the year.
Why communicators might want to begrudgingly join the party
Real talk — I don't think communicators ever felt a huge loss for Twitter and I don't blame them. The platform demanded newsroom-like speed while also exposing brands to detractors that had minimal checks on them.
But here's why companies outside of tech need to consider a strategy for X: pretty much every company out there has intertwined its growth story with AI. You're not going to be part of the conversation if you're not steeped in the culture where the conversation is happening.
As a digital communications specialist, my two most feared requests from a client team are:
"Can we update our Wikipedia page?"
"We should do a Reddit AMA."
Both of those platforms are so nuanced that you're going to get burned if you jump in to engage without a deep understanding and groundwork.
Let's not add "we should do something on X" to that list.
So what should brands do on X?
I'm not entirely sure yet. Maybe I'll share more in a future newsletter. What I'm sure of now is this: if you support a brand's comms or marketing function, you need to be on there, reading, before anyone asks you to post.
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