• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

As X attempts to foster its new “creator era,” the social-media company is launching a commercial offering designed to pair brands with ideal creators.

Using tech developed by sister company xAI, X’s head of content partnerships Mitchell Smith informed The Hollywood Reporter that X plans to identify and reach out to hyper-specific creators working across a range of content media who align with brands and are interested in participating in a campaign. 

“The company is a bit vague on the mechanics of it,” the article notes, adding that X will use "A brand new AI-powered system” to pair creators and brands while also incorporating campaign objectives, real-time trends and audience interest.

The initiative, called “Creator Connect,” is intended to highlight “commercial niche creators” who are seemingly harder to discover for brand deals, with Smith stating that X will be “canvassing the entire platform.”

“If there’s a specific niche creator that a brand really likes, we can actually then find a bunch of lookalike options, other people with similar voices or types of creation style,” Smith adds.

So far, X has reportedly used Creator Connect for campaigns including an unnamed premium laptop company looking for FI enthusiasts, a major movie studio promoting a horror film and upcoming World Cup soccer activations. 

“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,” Smith said.

Creator Connect builds off of X’s recent creator-focused changes to its home feed, including the addition of “Paid Partnership” labels in lieu of hashtags and began experimenting with new recognition tools aimed at boosting monetization revenue opportunities for original content creators over aggregate accounts.