July 2024 marked a year since Twitter changed its name to X, and next October, it will be 2 years since Elon Musk bought the bird-themed social network for $44 billion with the stated intent to transform it. Into what? An “everything app,” that is, an application that can meet all the needs of any user at any time. In other words, a super app with multitasking capabilities and unlimited interactivity, based on artificial intelligence systems, and incorporating multiple services into a single platform.

This is something entirely different from the concept that inspired Twitter’s creators about 18 years ago. It is no longer a virtual square for exchanging short messages with a group of people, but a platform that, for better understanding through similarities, would be closer to WeChat, the highly popular app in China. WeChat is used not only for messaging but also for managing finances, online shopping, and even booking doctor appointments. “For those who have used WeChat, I think it really represents a good model. If you’re in China, you practically live on WeChat. It does everything,” said Musk.

Musk’s goal, in line with his personality, is certainly very ambitious, almost megalomaniacal. So far, detractors point out, what we have seen is a rebranding that turned out to be a flop (many people still call X Twitter, while others specify “X-formerly Twitter” for clarity), mass layoffs, user privacy issues, a decline in advertisers leading to worrying revenue losses, and a frightening collapse in the platform’s value. Just recently, an analysis by the Washington Post estimated that in Musk’s 2 years of ownership, the value of the social platform has more than halved, losing an astonishing $24 billion: “a vaporization of wealth rarely seen outside of economic or sector crashes or devastating corporate scandals,” the newspaper emphasized.

Certainly, the transformation process Musk has embarked on is complex, and X still lacks many elements to call itself a comprehensive system. However, it is undeniable that X is already something different from other social platforms, which is immediately noticeable when browsing the app: the layout resembles a portal, videos and images have vastly superior quality… and although in small steps, the transformation is also taking place in its functionalities.

Just recently, X TV was introduced, a feature dedicated to video streaming content viewable on smart TVs, which poses a challenge to larger players like Google’s YouTube. X TV is currently in beta version and available only in the US, but global expansion is expected. The download is free, with a rather minimalist interface, and the videos offered for now are mainly those already present on X, posted directly by users. There will also be exclusive content, live events, and real-time news videos.

Chris Park is responsible for the development of new features for the platform, and from his X account we learned at the end of this summer about the X Conference, a new feature for group video calls among app users (in the style of Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, to be clear). This adds to the existing one-on-one call and video call features already available on X. At the moment the app is only for in-house testing, so not many details are known, including the possible launch date, but this is certainly another new piece in Musk’s super app project.

The goals are ambitious, and the risks are high, but by now, we are used to these kinds of bets from Musk: solar panels, electric cars, space rockets, high-speed magnetic levitation trains, brain-computer links… for Elon Musk, challenges know no limits.

 

Oscar Giacomin  / General Manager, Facto Edizioni

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