After previewing it last week, X has now officially launched its new “Bangers” promotion effort, which will reward the best creators in the app with a dedicated “Bangers” badge for the best X posts, based on “authentic interactions,” each month.
As explained by X:
“We want to recognize the very best posts that move the timeline, ranked by authentic interactions. If your post is featured, you will get a Certified Banger badge on your profile for the month.”
So, sounds pretty straightforward: The program will recognize the most engaging posts in the app each month, with the creators of each then awarded a special trophy that will be displayed beside their X username.
Which is kind of like Instagram’s recently launched “Rings” awards, which provides winning creators with unique profile features to help them stand out, in recognition of their efforts.
X’s trophy emoji is a more understated approach, but with the same concept, highlighting top creators in-stream, to help them gain more recognition and interest.
Sounds like a good promotion, and the details of the program are also pretty straightforward.
So what were the “Certified Bangers” for October?
Oh. I see.
So, the problem here is that if you only reward posts based purely on engagement, the quality will vary significantly.
In this case, a couple of the chosen posts are questions, which have elicited a ton of answers, but aren’t, in themselves, what most would define as “banger” posts.
I’m not sure that the others listed here would be what people would recall as “bangers” either, but they do have a lot of interactions, and if that’s the sole criteria, then this is what you’re going to get.
Do these posts highlight the best, most creative, most interesting takes that X has to offer, out of the hundred million or so original posts that are uploaded to the platform every day? I’d hope not, because if these are the peaks, that doesn’t bode particularly well for ongoing interest in the app.
To be fair, brand posts are not eligible for Bangers consideration, only updates from personal accounts, which cuts out a significant chunk of X activity.
Though I suspect that the real problem lies in this element:
“Bangers will be ranked by the sum of authentic interactions, which includes verified impressions, likes, bookmarks, reposts and replies.”
Verified impressions is the killer here. Only a fraction of X’s userbase (less than 1% of users) has signed up to X Premium, which means that “bangers,” in this context at least, will be defined by interactions from only a tiny percentage of X users.
It also looks like only posts from paying users will be considered (this is not spelled out in the terms, but all of the selected posts are from blue tick profiles), which means that, really, those chosen as “bangers” will only be representative of what the most dedicated, Elon Musk superfans, find engaging in the app.
Which is not indicative of broader engagement on X, and will likely see each list of monthly “bangers” look something like this, a lacklustre collection of questions and mid jokes, that resonated with this specific group of users.
But it’s something, and X is clearly trying to drum up interest in new ways.
I mean, I don’t think this is it, but maybe X will revise its approach, and make this a more interesting element at some stage.
