Musk’s Million-Dollar Content Challenge, the Rise of Long-Form Content, and the Ambition Behind the Everything App

As 2026 begins, X (formerly Twitter) has been making frequent moves. While we can't see whether anxiety is written on Musk's face, his tweets clearly reflect his concerns.

Musk stated, "We're still paying creators too little, and the allocation isn't good enough. YouTube does a much better job than we do in this regard."

Last weekend, X officially launched a million-dollar article bounty campaign, igniting a wave of long-form content creation on the platform.

The most impactful article so far is Dan Koe's "How to Fix Your Life in 1 Day," which has already surpassed 150 million views and was retweeted by Musk.

It's been several years since Musk acquired X, so why is he now aggressively advancing X's creator ecosystem? In an era where global reading habits are increasingly fragmented, why focus on long-form content? Can a revival of long-form writing really support Musk's vision for the Everything App?

Musk's Anxiety

Every company faces its own challenges, and even visionaries like Musk are not immune to anxiety. With competitors pressing in and X's financial performance under strain, Musk can no longer afford to wait and see.

X is facing intense competition in user growth and engagement, especially since Meta's Threads launched in 2023 and has rapidly gained traction, surpassing or approaching X in multiple key metrics.

According to the latest data from analytics firm Similarweb released in early January 2026, Threads' global daily active users (DAU) on mobile have surpassed X, averaging 143.2 million versus X's 126.2 million. X's global DAU has declined 11.9% year-over-year, while Threads posted an impressive 37.8% increase. Even in X's primary US market, X leads with 21.2 million DAU to Threads' 19.5 million, but the gap is narrowing quickly—Threads grew 41.8% year-over-year, while X declined 18.4%.

Threads is also excelling in monthly active users (MAU). As of January 2026, Threads reached 320 million MAU, growing from 350 million to 400 million in 2025. In contrast, X still maintains approximately 611 million MAU, but has lost around 32 million users since Musk's acquisition. This shifting dynamic is undoubtedly putting significant pressure on Musk.

The decline in user metrics has a direct impact on X's core revenue stream—advertising. Public data shows X's global ad revenue dropped to $2.5 billion in 2024, nearly halved from $4.4 billion in 2022. While a slight rebound to $2.26 billion is expected in 2025, the overall downward trend remains, with some projections estimating only a recovery to $2.7 billion by 2027.

Meanwhile, Threads is enjoying strong support from capital markets. Analysts forecast Threads' ad revenue could reach $11.3 billion in 2026, several times X's projected income. Even though X saw quarterly revenue growth at the end of 2025, high restructuring costs have kept the company in the red.

Although X Premium subscriptions grew significantly in 2025, their revenue contribution remains far below Musk's initial target of 50% of total income. As a result, X has directly linked Premium subscription growth to creator earnings, offering higher payouts and basing rewards on paid user impressions (Verified Home Timeline impressions). This is designed to motivate creators to produce high-quality content that attracts paying subscribers, thereby driving further Premium adoption.

This led to Musk's million-dollar article bounty campaign, reminiscent of the ancient "thousand gold for a steed's bone" gesture. In the Chinese-speaking community, users joked that Musk was launching America's version of the "New Concept Composition Contest" in 2026.

The Revival of Long-Form Content

Musk's decision to make long-form articles the breakthrough for X's creator ecosystem is no passing fancy—it's a result of deep strategic thinking about X's positioning.

Today, X's recommendation algorithm relies on a core metric: "regret-free user time," or the total effective time users spend on content. Musk has made it clear that this mechanism naturally favors long-form content, as it "accumulates more user seconds," increasing algorithmic weight and overall platform engagement.

Long-form articles, by offering depth, context, and complete narratives, inherently extend user engagement, standing in stark contrast to the rapid consumption of short posts or videos. Recent algorithm updates have introduced "content format weighting," explicitly rewarding long-form content that requires more creative effort and delivers greater impact. This approach both incentivizes creators and is a data-driven decision: high-quality long-form articles reduce users' tendency to follow external links, keep them on the platform longer, and provide more valuable training data for Musk's AI project, Grok AI.

Musk has repeatedly emphasized his goal to make X "the world's leading news source" by aggregating "collective wisdom" in real time to replace traditional media. The long-form feature enables users to publish "complete articles or even books," allowing experts, eyewitnesses, and in-depth creators to share their full insights directly on the platform, rather than fragmented information. Compared to massive subsidies for short videos on other platforms, the incentive model for long-form writing is more easily monetized through subscriptions, attracting more professional journalists and writers back to X.

Still, the question remains: with global reading habits increasingly fragmented, why is Musk pushing for this "literary renaissance"?

There's no denying that digital reading habits worldwide are increasingly fragmented, especially under the influence of short video platforms. Younger audiences like Gen Z prefer multiple brief reading sessions per day, each lasting 5–10 minutes. Yet data shows that overall reading volume is actually rising, and "slow, immersive reading" is emerging as a countertrend. As digital fatigue sets in, people are seeking deeper, more emotionally resonant, and meaningful content experiences.

X doesn't aspire to be another entertainment platform like TikTok. Instead, it aims to become a "life hub" deeply integrated into Americans' daily lives—Musk's long-envisioned "Everything App," similar to WeChat. Achieving this requires significantly enriching the platform's content and service ecosystem, boosting users' "regret-free usage time," and giving them more reasons to stay and accomplish more on X.

The Everything App Ambition

All of Musk's efforts ultimately point to one grand objective: transforming X into an "Everything App" akin to WeChat. However, X still faces a long road ahead.

Compared to WeChat, X trails significantly in several key areas. WeChat boasts over 1.4 billion monthly active users (MAU), while X has just 557 million—less than a third. This vast user base gap makes it difficult for X to generate the powerful network effects that keep users anchored because all their friends, family, and essential services are there. WeChat has become indispensable for many, while X is still seen by most as a platform for news and opinions—still the old Twitter, the "American Weibo."

User stickiness is another area where the gap is evident. WeChat users average 82 minutes per day, while X users spend only 30–35 minutes. The difference lies in functionality: WeChat enables chatting, payments, shopping, and access to municipal services—productive daily tasks—while X remains focused on passive content consumption, making it easy for users to "scroll and leave."

Musk doesn't want X to become another TikTok. His first step is to move X beyond the "scroll and leave" entertainment experience. He needs high-quality, in-depth content to increase user retention, attract and keep high-value users, and then use content as a foundation to gradually introduce payments, e-commerce, and other services—ultimately paving the way for the Everything App.

The bigger this dream grows, the deeper Musk's anxiety becomes.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is republished from [BlockBeats], with copyright belonging to the original author [Cookie]. If you have any concerns about this republication, please contact the Gate Learn team for prompt handling according to relevant procedures.
2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute investment advice.
3. Other language versions of this article are translated by the Gate Learn team. Unless Gate is referenced, translated articles may not be copied, distributed, or plagiarized.