Elon Musk Unveils Additional Details on X’s ‘Everything App’ Plan

Earlier this year, Twitter underwent a transformation, involving changes to its logo, name, and domain. However, Elon Musk, the owner of the company, has much bigger plans for the platform. Musk envisions turning Twitter into an “everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat, where users can engage in various activities beyond typical social media interactions. These activities may include checking bank account balances, job applications, live streaming, shopping for clothes, and even finding a date. Despite sounding far-fetched, Musk expressed his seriousness about this vision during the company’s initial all-hands employee meeting.

According to a report by The Verge, which published a full transcript of the meeting, Musk said, “We’re rapidly transitioning the company from the former Twitter 1.0 to an all-in-one app. [] An all-inclusive feature set that lets you do virtually anything on our system. Of course, this doesn’t rule out other apps, but I think the fundamental thing missing that would be incredibly useful is one app that covers everything.”

And what would that entail? Musk said simply: “You can make payments, messages, videos, calls, whatever you want, all in one convenient place.”

He added: “They have this in China to some extent with WeChat. We just don’t have it. It doesn’t exist outside of China. That doesn’t mean we just want to copy WeChat. I think we can actually create something that goes beyond WeChat. We can do some pretty amazing stuff here.”

So, what all the “amazing stuff” is Musk going to do in X? Let’s take a quick look.

Elon Musk’s “all app” plan for X

During the meeting, Musk went over all the achievements the company had achieved this year. This included several features that are currently in beta or alpha testing, and the company wants to release it within a certain period of time.

First on the list is the X’s voice/video calling feature, which, despite being an update, still falls under the purview of social media. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Signal already offer them. With or without the ‘All App’, this is a feature that users will appreciate.

Musk also highlights improvements to video streaming. Vertical scrolling, long video loading and an improved algorithm are some of the changes the company has made in recent months, improving the platform.

Referring to sharing ad revenue with content creators, Musk said, “This has made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. We’ve paid out over $20 million to content creators, and we expect that number to grow significantly. Our contributors have grown by an order of magnitude, and that’s only since the middle of this year. In less than six in a month, the number of content producers has increased tenfold.”

There are also fees. While Musk didn’t go into detail, he said: “For payments, we’re just waiting on all the approvals, which we should hopefully get in the next few months.”

Another of Musk’s ambitious plans is job search on the platform, a feature touted as X Hiring. X Hiring is a kind of LinkedIn competitor that allows companies to list job vacancies on the platform, receive CVs and notify applicants that they have been selected for an interview. Musk said: “We also introduced the beginning of recruiting, basically like a LinkedIn competitor. If you’re a company offering jobs or looking for jobs, this is a great place to find great people. Historically, I’ve done a lot of recruiting here.”

Murmurs of X Dating, a way to find people to relate to (like Facebook Dating?), was also mentioned during the meeting, with Musk stressing that finding is difficult.

Video streaming may also be coming to X soon. Musk said, “I think video streaming is going to be incredibly important for sporting events, for political events, for people who are on the ground. Instead of going through the lens of the media, you can actually allow people who are literally ground zero to broadcast live or upload video .

Musk also mentioned that the X’s search feature has received a “kind of AI-based” feature where users can use the “see similar posts” feature. The company has plans to further improve search and make it semantic.

Musk may also turn X into a PR Newswire-like platform. The company is planning a news distribution service called X Wire. He said, “Really, there’s no need for PR Newswire. We’re PR Newswire. How many people actually subscribe to PR Newswire? Basically nobody. If you really want to share information as a business, we’re by far the best way to do that.

Finally, Musk also went through a proposal to make the entire platform subscription-only for $1 per year. He emphasized the need for it because AI bots pass the “are you human” test and can manipulate the platform. He said, “We’re doing an experiment to see what the consequences would be if there was literally $1 a year, which is 0.3 cents a day. Sometimes I get this absurd thing, ‘How can people afford it in poor parts of the world?’ I’m like, ‘They’re kind of on the internet. They have an electronic device and they’re on the Internet, and a dollar a year is 0.3 cents a day. This is of course affordable for anyone.”