What changes will happen on Twitter under the new CEO – as Elon says app will be transformed into X
>
A new Chief Twit has taken office.
Elon Musk confirmed that NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino will become Twitter’s new CEO on Friday.
The tech mogul also heralded a transformation of the company into X, Musk’s long-held nickname for an “everything app.”
“I look forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” Musk tweeted.
But how much of everything will X be? And why exactly ‘X’? Here’s what we know about Musk’s X Plans.
Elon Musk was interviewed by Linda Yaccarino at a marketing conference on April 18 and it is speculated that the meeting was instrumental in her nomination
Musk announced Yaccarino’s appointment Friday morning with a tweet that read, “I look forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.”
Musk has been fixated on X.com’s branding potential since at least the late 1990s, when he launched the site as an online banking startup with co-founder Greg Kouri, a real estate developer and friend of his parents.
But Musk lost control of X.com when the start-up merged with its fierce e-payments rival, Confinity, in 2000, creating PayPal and making its fortune.
On July 5, 2017, Musk bought back the X.com domain from PayPal, explaining that it had “great sentimental value” to him.
Of course, Musk also sees great monetary value in X, hoping that the token weight of the infinitely variable math variable will help him build the ultimate app for all forms of human interaction.
Payments
At this time last year at the All-in Summit, Musk was admiringly waxing Tencent’s WeChat, a behemoth Chinese social media app that powers messaging and video chatting, video games, photo sharing, rideshare services, food delivery, banking. and shopping offers.
“When you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat” Musk has said.
“It does everything — kind of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a bunch of stuff, and it all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app and we don’t have anything like it outside of China.’
With recent expansions of payment features on Twitter, it’s clear that Musk’s vision for X.com will certainly be a US rival to WeChat that offers a similar buffet of Internet services and features.
Phone and video calls
Earlier this week, Musk tweeted that new features are currently being developed that will enable voice and video chat through users’ Twitter accounts
Musk said Twitter users will soon be able to “talk to people anywhere in the world without giving them your phone number.”
The move could help Twitter compete with its social media rival Meta, which offers video chat services via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to its billions of users around the world.
This week, the billionaire revealed that video and voice chat features were ‘coming soon’
By comparison, Twitter had a reported 238 million daily monetized users last July.
It’s clear that Musk is aiming for WhatsApp’s market share, since the billionaire said the messaging service “cannot be trusted” in response to claims made by Foad Dabiri, Twitter’s current technical director.
Dabiri had tweeted that WhatsApp accessed his phone’s microphone while he slept.
Broadcasts and newsletters
Under Musk, Twitter has already tried to break into the paid newsletter space, sparring with market leader Substack and offering payment and subscription services to aspiring content creators.
But that’s just one step in Musk’s ambitions to expand Twitter as a media destination and not just a microblogging platform for talking about media elsewhere.
While Musk has publicly stated that he did not make a deal with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to bring his show to Twitter, it is clear that he had encouraged media figures to do so on their own initiative and money.
Musk tweeted to ousted CNN host Don Lemon, “Have you considered doing your show on this platform? Maybe worth a try. The audience is much bigger.’
Dating after that?
Serious or not, Musk has entertained calls from his fans to add dating app features to the service, which YouTuber Steven Mark Ryan suggested as a solution to Musk’s concerns about falling birth rates.
“Interesting idea,” Musk replied, “maybe jobs too.”
The dating app pitch came from content creator Steven Mark Ryan, a YouTuber who posts videos on tech and financial news
The potential dating app, which the Twitter CEO thought was an “interesting idea,” would use artificial intelligence to make matches instead of swiping at random
While other social sites, including Facebook, have made an attempt to enter the dating app space, none have made a dent in market giant Tinder, which boasts of making 55 billion matches within eight years.
In comparison, since launching in 2019, Facebook Dating claims to have made more than 1.5 billion matches in 20 countries.
Undoubtedly there is no loftier, more difficult ambition than to achieve ‘everything’.
But that’s exactly what X should accomplish to succeed, displacing rivals in multiple spaces, such as dating apps, where the market dynamics are already mature.
Sentiment value is one thing, but for X.com to rise again, it needs to be more than just a passion project.