What happened
X has begun moving signed-in users to a rebuilt version of its web app, releasing it on a country-by-country basis, The Verge reported. The company says the new app runs considerably faster than the one it replaces. According to principal engineer Yagiz Nizipli, the rewrite already powers X.com for visitors who are not logged in, along with the pages that search engines crawl.
In a blog post describing the changes, Nizipli pointed to a profile page opened on a slow connection. Under the old app, he said, visitors could wait upward of 22 seconds with nothing but the company's logo on screen before a post appeared, whereas the new app shows the first one after 2.7 seconds. The post also explains that a single server now handles work previously split across three, serving people, search crawlers and link previews.
Security researcher Jane Manchun Wong said in a post that she had been given access to the updated app. She described it as quick and fast to load, and said many parts of it appear polished. Her impressions offer an early outside view of the rewrite while the staged rollout to signed-in users continues across countries.
Context
Before the rewrite, X operated three distinct servers to deliver its web experience: one for human visitors, one for search engine crawlers and one for generating link previews. The company deployed the new app on logged-out traffic and crawler-facing pages before extending it to signed-in accounts, and it is now expanding that rollout gradually by country rather than switching everyone over at once.
The briefing
The week in tech, in one email.
The dispatches worth your time, every week. Unsubscribe anytime.