this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Gonna play devil's advocate here.
If Elon is truly able to turn The App Formerly Known As Twitter into an 'everything app' that's actually worth using, this could be a bone-headed move that pays off in dividends. It depends on what he plans to introduce to X within the next year or two. Transforming X into a messaging app won't be enough.
Musk's line of thought here isn't completely asinine. Let's not deny that superapps like LINE, WeChat, Alipay, Taobao and others exist, and absolutely dominate the digital landscape in their own regions.
Problem is, Twitter already has stiff competition. Threads is by far its largest competitor, and the moment Zuckerberg implements hashtags and trending topics, X is going to hemorrhage users.
This is honestly the direction Steve Huffman should've taken with Reddit instead of jacking up API prices and gouging every third-party app out of existence. Imagine if RPAN became a legitimate monetized mobile livestreaming platform instead of some dumb social experiment with seriously limited broadcasting times/broadcasters at once, or if Spez allowed content creators to sell access to premium content á la Tumblr Post+, Fansly, Patreon or OnlyFans. Enough e-girls have been astroturfing the shit out of Reddit to plug their paywalled collection of nudes, so may as well cut out the middle-man and drive OF out of business.
Facebook already tried to do the "everything app" and it failed in the US.
And Mark Zuckerberg is a million times more competent at business than Elon.
especially since mark doesn't fire all the compentent people the second they bring up a problem
Yeah, you know what those have in common? They all started providing one service more successfully than anyone else on that market and slowly accreted functionality in the absence of a popular local dedicated service. Twitter is not that, was never going to be that, and it is not becoming that, certainly not with a skeleton crew. The same goes for Reddit, which was certainly bigger than people think but not big enough to pull that move. It may have grown into a OF alternative specifically, just from having a foot on that business already, but that's about it.
We do have one of those "everything apps" here, though. It's called Facebook. Terminally online people don't realize, but there are millions of people right now buying and selling used stuff, dating, watching videos and exchanging business information over it, even without accounting for the rest of the Meta ecosystem.
That makes sense until you realize he already made a company called x.com that failed, and it's the source of his fortune
A bunch of people discussed in another thread why that doesn't make sense: https://iusearchlinux.fyi/comment/976118
For 44 billion, he could have started a rival platform from scratch and paid people $100 each as a sign up bonus. That would be for over 400 million customers.
It isn't a bad thought, but it should be quickly apparent that an American equivalent might not work. The West isn't the same as those regions. There's a complex interplay of culture, history, and the current market scene. A good business person would recognize the possibility that it might not work and just do exploratory work. Musk in his arrogance thinks he can make it happen regardless
That opening conditional (emphasis added) is carrying a whole lot of weight...
How many people would trust Elon Musk with their banking details? I doubt enough to make the $44 billion worth it.
Yeah, how bad does it reflect on someone's credit report if they don't pay their rent and other bills for many months?
Maybe that sort of thing doesn't count on the credit report for a billionaire (because they don't have to follow any rules), but it counts for most people.
I wouldn't even trust a thin dime with Elon Musk given the way he operates.
I wouldn't trust Musk to tell me the time of day without double-checking on at least three other clocks to make sure.