The next stage for ‘Twitter 2.0’ could potentially include a name change for the app (sound familiar?). As of this article, Twitter Inc. is officially no more, with the company being rolled into another corporate entity called ‘X Corp’, under Elon Musk’s ownership. X Corp? Was the name ripped directly from Marvel’s X-Men universe?

The X Factor

The merger was revealed in court documents, tendered as part of legal action being taken against the app. According to the filing:

“Twitter Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists. X Corp. is a privately held corporation, incorporated in Nevada, and with its principal place of business in San Francisco, California.”

The change links back to Musk’s vision for a universal, ‘everything app’, which he affectionately refers to as ‘X’, for which Musk also holds the X.com URL, as part of his future planning for the app. Musk reiterated last October, as he was finalizing his Twitter acquisition deal, that X remains his long-term plan for the business.

Musk has talked about building an app that could provide similar, all-encompassing functionality to how WeChat has become a key utility in China, with Chinese citizens doing almost everything in the app – from paying bills to buying PUV tickets, to shopping. Given Musk’s extensive background on digital payments and Twitter’s connectivity, he’s hoping to integrate payment functionality into Tweets, making it easy to transfer funds, free of charge, globally.

Musk outlined an entire timeline during the Morgan Stanley Tech Conference last month, basically stating that PayPal, a company he had a key role in establishing in the 2000s, is a “halfway” version of what he thinks can be done with online payments and finance. Musk originally founded an online banking startup called X.com in 1999, which PayPal eventually acquired. Before eventually being ousted by Paypal’s board, PayPal was actually called ‘X.com’ when Musk was still the CEO.

In some ways, this could be viewed as a precursor to the cryptocurrency movement, which has thus far failed to gain traction because the use case for crypto, at least in Western markets, is still unclear. Part of crypto’s appeal is that it enables people to take more personal control of their money by essentially splitting from banks and government regulation. Granted, given the various collapses of crypto currently, we now realize that these regulations exist for a reason.

Musk has offered tacit support for cryptocurrencies, particularly Dogecoin, but that isn’t a key driver, at least not yet, in his latest X.com mission. Is he trying to revive the old service? The main aim looks to be simplified, streamlined payments, along with expanded finance options, all built into a single app – an app that would become a key facilitator of your digital identity. That’s what WeChat is, and has become for a billion people in China, but only after years of rigor and continuous refinement.

The Wrap

So, that’s the mantle that Musk is now trying to take up – but again, past experience shows that Western users don’t really want that. Add all the regulatory headaches and Musk’s past, very public disdain for the bodies that are in charge of such, and it’s difficult to see how this would actually work on Twitter on a functional level.

This corporate name change does point to this being the long-term goal and the broader vision for making Twitter a bigger deal for more users. For now, the path is still rather foggy, but Musk seems to believe that his 1999 vision is the real future of Twitter.

Sources

http://bit.ly/3o5Zi9k