Amid a developing war with Substack thought to be triggered by its upcoming Twitter-like feature, CEO and owner Elon Musk has hinted at his longstanding ambition to turn Twitter into an “everything app,” including video chat and payment services.
A week after Twitter merged into his company X Corp, Musk tweeted the letter “X,” which he has previously discussed as the name for his potential “everything app.”
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has previously discussed the lack of an equivalent to the “everything apps” that are common in Asia, which combine services like chat, social networking, payment processing, and even ride-sharing, grocery shopping, streaming and video games.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” said Musk shortly before the acquisition went through.
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
There are signs that Musk’s plans to move Twitter in this direction are underway. Earlier this year, Twitter applied for the regulatory licenses required to operate a payments service in the U.S.
Musk has also taken a cavalier approach to Twitter’s existing brand, perhaps foreshadowing an eventual change to “X” or another name.
Musk recently swapped Twitter’s bird mascot to a picture of the “doge,” the ubiquitous dog that has become a popular meme and the symbol of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. More recently, Musk had the “w” on Twitter’s HQ sign painted over in white, so that the sign now spells the word “titter.”
As Musk plans to integrate the features of many platforms into one app, other companies are doing the same. A major dust-up between the newsletter platform Substack and Twitter is underway, believed to be sparked by the latter’s upcoming rollout of Notes, a Twitter-like feature for short-form content.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.