Tony Wang8 min readWe Read 298,228 X Bios. The Profile Résumé Is Disappearing.
Job title, employer, 'opinions my own,' a link — the classic X bio is fading. Newer arrivals leave it blank, a pattern seen in two independent groups.
The 2010s Twitter bio was a tiny résumé. You had 160 characters and you spent them the same way everyone did: job title, the companies you worked for as @-mentions, maybe an "ex-Google" or "formerly NYT," the obligatory "views my own," and a link to your blog. It was LinkedIn compressed into one line.
We pulled 298,228 public X bios — every account in a 325,553-profile index that had written one — and the compressed-LinkedIn bio is quietly disappearing. Newer arrivals fill in less of it, or skip it entirely. And because we can split the data by an independent second population, we can show the effect is real and not an artifact of who we happened to sample.
The profile is emptying out
The cleanest single signal is the website link — the little URL field under your name. Here is the share of each sign-up cohort that still fills it in, measured today, for two unrelated groups: people with a Wikidata entity, and public GitHub developers.
Both lines fall, over the same years, in two groups with nothing in common except being on X. That is the signature of a real behavioral shift: people who joined recently set their profile up more sparsely than people who joined a decade ago. The blank bio tells the same story — among Wikidata-notable people, the share with no bio at all rose from 5% of 2009 sign-ups to 28% of 2024's, and 40% of 2026's.
The résumé elements are going one by one
Break the classic bio into its parts and each is in retreat. This table shows the 2009 sign-up cohort against the 2024 sign-up cohort, for both groups — the numbers move the same direction in every row:
| Bio element (share of cohort) | Notable: 2009 → 2024 | Developers: 2009 → 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Has any bio | 94.6% → 72.1% | 89.1% → 81.9% |
| Website link in profile | 87.0% → 57.3% | 77.8% → 60.4% |
| Names an employer (@mention) | 20.8% → 14.5% | 29.0% → 16.2% |
| "ex-" / "formerly" / "alum" | 1.3% → 0.4% | 5.0% → 1.7% |
| "opinions / views my own" | 1.0% → 0.1% | 4.5% → 0.5% |
The disclaimer is the one to sit with. "Opinions are my own, retweets aren't endorsements" was the reflex of the professional-on-a-personal-account era — you worked somewhere that might care what you posted, so you hedged. Among developers it has fallen roughly tenfold, from 4.5% of 2009-era bios to 0.5% of 2024-era ones, in a population whose day jobs didn't change. People are no longer introducing themselves as an employee who happens to be tweeting. The employer name-drops (@-mentions) and the "ex-Google" credential-stacking are fading for the same reason.
What replaces it: emoji and "AI"
The bio isn't just shrinking to nothing — a little of the space that used to hold a job title now holds identity of a different kind. Two things rise while everything else falls.
The first is emoji. Among Wikidata-notable people, the share of bios with at least one emoji climbed from 14% of 2009 sign-ups to a peak of 31% around 2021 before easing back. A flag, a heart, a rocket — compressed identity that isn't a credential.
The second, in the developer world, is a single acronym:
More than one in five developers who joined X in 2026 mention AI, ML, or LLMs in their bio — it is now the single most common self-description in that group, ahead of "engineer," "founder," or any company name. The résumé didn't just get shorter; the one credential still worth stating changed.
A few smaller things worth noting from the full read of 298,228 bios: they run about 100 characters on average (the 160-character limit is a soft ceiling only 3% reach); 15% contain Japanese or Chinese script; and the "find me elsewhere" hedge people predicted — links to Bluesky or Mastodon — never materialized at scale, sitting under 1% and falling, not rising, among recent cohorts.
What this shows, and what it doesn't
What we think holds up: newer X arrivals set up sparser profiles than older ones — fewer bios, fewer links, fewer employer mentions, and a near-total collapse of the "opinions my own" disclaimer. The pattern replicates across two independent populations over the same years, which is strong evidence it reflects changing profile behavior rather than changing sample composition. Emoji and, among developers, "AI" are the two things moving the other way.
What limits it:
- These are sign-up cohorts measured once, in June 2026 — not the same bios tracked over time. We're comparing "people who joined in 2009" with "people who joined in 2024" as they look today. That's the right way to ask "how do newer arrivals present themselves," but it is not a claim that any individual emptied out their bio.
- Survivorship cuts into the old cohorts. The 2009 accounts we can see are the ones that survived to 2026; the more casual 2009 sign-ups are disproportionately gone, which likely makes the old cohorts look more polished than the year truly was — so the real decline may be gentler than the raw gap.
- Seeded, Western-skewed sample. The corpus is built from Wikidata, GitHub, founders and journalists, so it over-represents established and Anglophone accounts. The direction replicating across two of those groups is the robust part; treat the absolute percentages as descriptive of this population.
- Theme detection is keyword-based, so it undercounts anything phrased unusually and can't read intent — "AI" catches the acronym, not whether the person actually works in it.
The tidy read is that X got less professional, and that's part of it. But the sharper version is narrower: the profile bio used to be where you filed your credentials, and newer users don't file them there anymore. The résumé line is becoming a blank line, an emoji, or the letters "AI."
Sources
Methodology
We built a search index of 325,553 unique public X profiles, of which 298,228 (91.6%) had a non-empty bio, each carrying bio text, website-field presence, join date, follower/following/post counts, and the seed source it was discovered through. The corpus was pulled through the X users dataset and reconciled against the dataset's facet counts to within 0.01%.
Every trend is computed within a single seed source — Wikidata-notable people, or GitHub developers, separately — so that the shifting mix of sources across years cannot masquerade as a change in behavior. Cohorts are defined by account creation year and measured at crawl time (June 2026). Bio themes are detected with documented keyword patterns (for example, an employer @-mention, an "opinions my own" disclaimer, or an AI/ML/LLM term); keyword matching is a shape, not a semantic census. We publish aggregates only — no individual bio records.
Update, August 2026: a new discovery channel (Common Crawl) has since added 324,523 more profiles to this index with a very different composition — see how that changes the picture.
Want to run your own cut? The X users dataset is searchable over bio, location and profile fields, the how to scrape Twitter/X guide covers the calls, and pricing has the free tier. Companion studies from the same corpus: a random developer is 5x more likely than a notable person to have a blue check, the most prolific poster on X is a machine, and X's real follow limit is 7,500.
Frequently asked questions
How has the typical X (Twitter) bio changed over time?
The self-introducing 'résumé' bio — job title, an employer @mention, an 'opinions my own' disclaimer, and a website link — is fading among newer accounts. Across 298,228 bios, the share of Wikidata-notable people listing a website fell from 87% of 2009 sign-ups to 57% of 2024 sign-ups, blank bios rose from 5% to 28%, and the 'opinions my own' disclaimer nearly disappeared. The pattern replicates among public GitHub developers, so it reflects changing profile behavior, not a change in who was sampled.
What do people put in their X bio now instead?
Less, plus two rising signals. Emoji rose from 14% of notable-people bios in 2009 to a peak of 31% around 2021. Among developers, mentions of AI/ML/LLM rose from 10% of 2009 sign-ups to 21% of 2026 sign-ups — now the single most common self-description in that group, ahead of 'engineer,' 'founder,' or any company name. The résumé line is becoming a blank line, an emoji, or the letters 'AI.'
Do people link to Bluesky or Mastodon in their X bios?
Barely, and the 'find me elsewhere' migration never showed up at scale. Across all bios, Bluesky mentions sit under 0.7% and Mastodon under 0.4% — and both are falling, not rising, among recent sign-up cohorts, not climbing as the platform-exodus narrative would predict.
Is this measuring the same bios changing over time?
No — it compares sign-up cohorts measured once, in June 2026. We compare people who joined in 2009 with people who joined in 2024 as their profiles look today, which is the right way to ask how newer arrivals present themselves but is not a claim that any individual rewrote their bio. Survivorship also flatters the old cohorts (only the accounts that lasted are visible), so the true decline may be gentler than the raw gap.