As Twitter searches for a new CEO to replace its current acting one — owner Elon Musk — he continues to dicker with all facets of its users’ experience, including its user interface (UI), prompting some users to wonder what he is reshaping the once distinctive microblogging platform into — and why?

“Twitter ui by next week,” quipped @oliviatheehye, retweeting another user’s posting of a trademark TikTok video.

It was a clear reference to moves by Musk to tweak Twitter’s UI to make it more engaging — and more entertaining — in a way that emulates what fast-growing platforms like TikTok and Snapchat have been generating massive impressions with.

In the last 24 hours, Musk had Twitter’s engineering team add a “view count” alongside the quote, retweet and like metrics at the bottom of each user’s tweet.

“You can see how many times a tweet has been seen!,” @elonmusk gushed, adding: “This is normal for video,” ostensibly meaning videos on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.”

Musk went on to argue that the tweak “shows how much more alive Twitter is than it may seem, as over 90% of Twitter users read, but don’t tweet, reply or like, as those are public actions.”

He then took one of his recent public actions, tweeting a Twitter poll asking users asking his followers whether the new tweet impressions counts should “stay on left,” where they initially were placed, or “move to right.”

Not surprisingly, a majority of @elonmusk followers want to move to the right.

The new tweet impressions metric seems to be intended to create more virality among less active users, clicking through to enhanced metrics including “engagements,” “detail expands,” “new followers,” and “profile visits.”

It also appears to be a promotional upsell encouraging users to “switch to professional” accounts.