X says it’s entering its “creator era” with a new sponcon marketplace

As Elon Musk enters his flop era in federal court, X says it’s entering its “creator era.”

Not long after he was forced to buy then-Twitter in 2022, Musk rebranded the platform and began pushing it as the next big thing in digital content. He changed the way verification worked, so anyone with a credit card could feel special. He began paying users based on the amount of engagement their posts generated (usually). He tried really, really, really hard to woo MrBeast.

Musk has a tendency to get wrapped up with other things, so X’s creator ambitions are being handled by execs like its Head of Product, Nikita Bier, and its Global Head of Content Partnerships Mitchell Smith.

In March, X revamped its “Creator Subscriptions,” which it describes as a set of “powerful new tools to grow your subscribers and earn more.” One of those tools is “Exclusive Threads,” where creators can paywall a string of posts. Think of like a kind of challenger for things like Substack and Medium.

And think of X’s newest stab at our economy like YouTube’s BrandConnect.

That’s right: Its newest creator product is “Creator Connect,” a marketplace that hooks up brands and creators for sponcon deals. Anyone who’s been around the block in our space will know this is a common offering from platforms. YouTube, as mentioned, has BrandConnect; TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and more all have their own versions.

Platforms generally don’t take a cut of these deals. They benefit because marketplaces allow them to show off the caliber of their creators–and can draw in advertisers willing to pay platforms directly for programmatic ads. X launching a marketplace means it thinks it has creators brands will want to work with.

Smith confirmed this to The Hollywood Reporter, explaining X believes Creator Connect will pair “[blue chip brands] to a lot of rising creators and niche creators, not just that upper 1 percent but actually creators that have an audience and an authority in a specific space that might be a mile deep, even if it’s an inch wide.”

And, like everything else Musk touches, Creator Connect is thoroughly steeped in gen AI.

Per THR, when a brand enters Creator Connect and wants to run a specific campaign, X will use AI to plow through thousands of creators’ text, video, and photo content, then identify which ones the brand should be working with. It’ll then reach out to those creators and see if they’re interested.

“What we can do is we can provide clients with a brand new AI-powered system to essentially select the most impactful creators on the platform,” Smith said. “So we look at it as a hyper-intelligent creator-led branded content solution, where we’re essentially leveraging proprietary tooling through our sister company xAI, to pair the most suitable creators on the platform with client specific campaign needs.”

X said it’s already used Creator Connect to arrange a couple campaigns, including “one for a premium laptop company that wanted tech creators who were F1 enthusiasts, and a major movie studio for a recent horror film.” It’s also, like every other platform, paying attention to live sports, and is looking at partnerships around the upcoming World Cup.

Smith said Creator Connect and other developments are happening because “We’ve really been looking at this as the year where we’re entering our creator era as a platform, and really trying to build a platform that fosters a healthy creator economy.”

“Our head of product, Nikita [Bier], is so committed to really bettering the platform for creators,” he went on. “As a result, we’re seeing a lot of great engagement around creators, and all of that organic work finally gives us the credibility to now go to market with a commercial offering.”

So…will this work? Smith makes the point that X has inherited Twitter’s legacy as the now right now platform, where everything is in real time. “Something happens in the world, and people are talking about it [on X],” he said.

That’s true. But since Musk’s takeover, X has faced significant problems maintaining content quality. It’s rife with hate speech, plagued by bots, and has been accused by regulators of having a “systemic” problem with the dissemination of child sexual abuse material.

We know how it goes when platforms struggle to maintain child safety. Top advertisers withdrew from X en masse in 2024, but the platform’s Global Head of Advertising, Monique Pintarelli, claims they’ve nearly all returned. Whether that’s accurate, and whether those advertisers will allocate their dollars to X’s creator marketplace over YouTube or TikTok’s, remains to be seen.