06/08/2023 by OTTO Magazin
On Sunday, July 23rd, MR Elon Musk, the richest man in the whole world right now, officially decided to change the name of Twitter, the popular social media platform created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, to « X Croup ».
This decision means that he is going to remove the blue bird logo, which is almost the most famous symbol for any social media platform anywhere.
In addition to that, all the descriptive words related to it, at the top of these words and the most famous one as well is « tweet ».
This also means the appearance and content of the entire platform is going to change. In a culmination of a series of massive changes made over the past few months, the initial estimates from Bloomberg stated that Elon Musk’s move wiped off between 4 and 20 billion dollars from Twitter’s brand value in the market. An extraordinary brand that gained prominence among users around the world over the past 17 years since its launch in 2006.
The most distinctive element of it was the blue bird logo.
Of course, if this is true, it would be a significant loss. Especially considering that in May, Fidelity Investments, a well-known investment firm, valued Twitter at only $15 billion.
However, this was before the changes and decisions made by Elon Musk in recent months.
Fidelity’s valuation, by the way, is approximately the same as Musk’s valuation during the same period, where he stated that Twitter is worth less than half of the price paid, which was $44 billion.
This caused a wave of outrage among a considerable number of experts in advertising, marketing, digital media, and the financial sector.
Some of them consider this as the final nail in Twitter’s coffin arguing that it is the site’s death approaching.
On the other hand, considering Elon Musk, one finds him seemingly indifferent to all of this.
He sees all of this going on and acts with complete disregard, doing what he believes is right.
Why?đ€·ââïžđ€đ€đ€đ€đ€đ€
Because he has a different dream that he has been talking about for over 20 years.
A dream to establish and own the largest financial institution in the world.
An institution that controls half of the global financial system, as he himself has stated!
Buying Twitter, which he was forced to do after trying to back out of the deal before it was finalized, is what will accelerate the realization of his dream. This is his vision for everything that is happening.
So, what exactly is happening with Twitter? đđđ
What is its relationship with the global financial system and with us?đ€
Does Elon Musk have a brilliant plan or is it just a dream that will surpass him into a real catastrophe?
That’s the story we are going to discuss..
I’am your friends guys, and welcome to OTTO Magazin: đđđ
Let me first quickly tell you about what happened in the past few days:
On the night of Saturday, July 22nd, Mr. Musk announced the expected change in a number of tweets on his personal account, which is followed by more than 150 million people.
The official decision was issued on Sunday. And on Monday, the change was already implemented on the entire website.
Linda Yaccarino, CEO of Twitter, announced that X Corp will be a platform for everything:
visual content, voice calls, messaging, social networking, payments, money transfers, and so on. On the same day, the company brought workers to remove the word « Twitter » from the main headquarters building in San Francisco, and here is a funny incident that I have to tell you about.
The change happened so quickly and spontaneously that nobody bothered to send a request to the Building Inspection Department in San Francisco for the change.
The building management, who leased the space to Twitter, objected to this because company officials were supposed to seek their permission before making any changes to the building according to the lease agreement.
That’s why when the workers were removing the name, the police arrived based on a call from the building management and asked the workers to stop what they were doing.
So, they left the last two letters « ER », and later after that, they removed one side as you can see on the screen.
Last Friday, they placed the new X mark, which is a metal sculpture, quickly on the building, seemingly challenging the building management and the city itself.
The building inspection department has opened an investigation into that incident.
Now, let’s put the comedy aside and get back to the main point, What is happening?
There have been known cases for all of us where major companies have rebranded themselves in the past few years. Their most famous is Google, which turned into Alphabet Inc, and the clear reason was that the parent company wanted the other different companies within it to grow without being associated with the most famous search engine brand.
Facebook also transformed itself into Meta Platforms Inc, and the main reason was to assure investors and the world of the company’s full commitment to creating the metaverse world that Mark Zuckerberg dreams of, in addition to the same reason as Google, where the company’s other products are not connected to Facebook.
But Twitter’s case is pretty much different, the significant difference here is that Twitter, now known as X, simply does not have any product other than the platform itself.
In the past few months, Musk has been moving at an astonishing speed to leave his mark on the platform, impose his vision, and bring about change.
What did he do?!đ€đ€«
He cut its workforce by 80%, fired most of the executive directors and department heads, and kept approximately 2,000 employees only.
He made verification available to everyone through a monthly subscription, after it was previously limited to certain categories, such as influencers or public figures in various fields. He opened the door to massive changes in content policies.
He reactivated many accounts that were previously suspended by the previous Twitter management, including the account of former US President Donald Trump.
All of this has made Twitter’s financial situation bad since Musk took over. Musk himself said that from October of last year until now,
Twitter has lost more than 50% of its advertising revenue, which represents 91.5% of its profits before Musk’s direct takeover.
A significant number of experts and analysts have unanimously concluded that Twitter has lost about 32% of its value after Musk’s takeover.
Furthermore, Musk himself stated in November, after taking over and initiating extensive layoffs, that Twitter was losing more than 4 million dollars per day and that he had no other options but to lay off employees.
All these changes have been very upsetting to a significant number of website users and several major advertisers who withdrew, as I mentioned earlier, out of fear of the impact on their brand’s « integrity and neutrality, » as they stated.
However, those changes were well-received by a group of followers who were against the policies of echo chambers that dominated most social media platforms, hence bringing them back to the platform.
That was definitely an attraction factor for Musk fans, those who support and admire him.
In fact, Musk’s popularity has led some experts to strongly believe that he himself is a stronger brand than Twitter. And perhaps this is the main, or rather the only, factor that has given some people, including Musk himself, confidence in the success of everything that has happened and will happen.
To the extent that Musk himself predicted a few months ago that Twitter’s value in the near future would reach $250 billion!
What is Musk seeking to achieve behind all of this? đ€·đ€·đ€·đ€·
Simply, he wants to use Twitter as a powerful tool to accelerate the realization of his dream of having an all-encompassing application, the « Everything App. » What is this « Everything Application »? It is basically an application through which you can do everything.
Send messages – make audio and video calls – provide written and visual content -transfer and receive money – use transportation services – trade – order various purchases – pay bills and book appointments.
Almost everything in our daily activities.
Well, did Musk wake up suddenly deciding to create this?đźâđš
The truth is that Elon Musk’s dream is not born in the past few months, but it dates back to the late 1990s.
Yes, this man has had a vision for X Corp ever since he bought the X.com domain in 1999.
At that time, he purchased it to start his own payment project.
Afterward, X.com merged with a software company called Confinity in 2000 to create the world-famous online payment company, PayPal,which was the cornerstone for Musk’s current wealth.
After 23 years, it seems that Elon Musk is still insisting on the name and his giant project.
Musk simply, as he himself stated before, wants to create an application similar to WeChat.
For those who don’t know, WeChat is a Chinese application owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd,
the largest Asian digital technology company and one of the biggest technology companies in the world, with a market value of over $440 billion ($440.6 billion).
The application is used by approximately 1.7 billion users and combines several services within a very powerful single application, such as calls and messages. It is itself a social communication platform.
Additionally, it allows for money transfers, bill payment, doctor appointments booking, ordering transportation, and more.
That’s why they call it in China the « App for everything » or also the « Super App ». There is another example in Asia, which is the Grab application.
Grab is a multinational technology company based in Singapore. It provides ride-hailing, food delivery, and financial services in Southeast Asian countries, specifically Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Therefore, what Elon Musk wants is to create an application similar to WeChat or Grab, but with American and European presence and regulations.
You may say, well sir, that sounds good. Where’s the problem?đ
It must be said that; it is not a problem itself, it is rather the unrealistic expectations or skepticism from the opponents who consider that the matter is much bigger than Musk’s capabilities.
Well, why is that?
It is said that there are many reasons:
First, There are people smarter than Elon Musk with more resources who have tried and failed or found that an all-in-one application is not a viable business option [business wise].
If we focus, for example, on the giant company Alphabet, you will find within it Google as a search engine, YouTube, Google Maps, and Gmail.
Within YouTube itself, you will find the main YouTube application, YouTube Kids, and YouTube Studio for content creators, and so on.
Each thing has a separate application because it reduces maintenance costs, increases focus on development, improves the development process itself, and ensures that the entire system does not collapse if any part of it fails for any reason.
As for the application that is intended to do everything, it will often face more tech problems and it will be slow and crowded.
Secondly, the Western consumer is more difficult and demanding than the Asian consumer. When they find a service or application that satisfies their needs, they develop loyalty towards it and are not easily going to let it off. It is not wrong by the way. It is natural for me to be loyal to the service provider I am using when they show interest in my needs, continually evaluate their service, and constantly improve it.
I would be loyal to them, and it will not be easy for me to abandon such a service.
Third, Western consumers also do not like to put all their eggs in one basket, as they say.
They prefer diversity and do not want one company to monopolize most of their activities.
Fourth, the circumstances surrounding the emergence of Asian applications are different from those of American applications. When Asian applications first emerged, they were primarily targeted towards Asian consumers, most of whom were using the internet for the first time through their mobile phones rather than regular computers.
As a result, a strong connection was established between users and these services from the very beginning.
Here is an important lesson for anyone who has a business, a start up, or planning to launch a venture.
The initial moments of the user’s experience always shape their impressions of your project.
It often determines whether they will continue with you or abandon your services based on those initial impressions.
The unfortunate or fortunate news, depending on these impressions, is that the user’s decision is unlikely to change afterward.
The fifth reason that makes it challenging to bring Elon Musk’s project or dream into reality is that the Western consumer, especially the American consumer, whom Musk naturally targets, does not suffer poor or limited choices in terms of money transfers, borrowing, and the like.
On the contrary, they have many options outside the realm of banks.
Moreover, even within the banking sector itself, which is the primary space for the Western consumer, there are thousands of different options available, despite the presence of many flaws in these choices.
Therefore, Elon Musk’s main dilemma here, for example, would be how he can gain the trust of customers to entrust his application with their money, outside the realm of his followers who already admire him.
However, despite all that has been mentioned before, there is some audacity in the radical step that Musk recently took on Twitter, which is changing its name to X Corp.
« Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, implicitly stated that when Musk acquired Twitter, the brand was struggling.
By that, he meant that it was filled with negatives, problems, debts, and was not keeping up with advancements.
Therefore, the initiation of X Corp could be seen as a practical decision for a fresh start. »
In other words, demolishing the cage in which the bird was trapped was necessary for a fresh start for the platform.
Therefore, Musk himself made it clear when he stated that the old identity of Twitter no longer represents the site after the major changes it underwent in almost everything.
The name « Twitter » made sense when it was limited to 140 characters in a message.
But now, anyone can publish anything of almost any length, including long videos and full-length movies.
He continued, in the coming months, they will be adding the ability to make long calls through the platform, and everyone will be able to fully manage their financial world, as he expressed it.
Therefore, the name Twitter is no longer logical, and we must bid farewell to the blue bird forever.
The second thing that could be in favor of Musk is the very simple rule that most of us know, which is:
Business is business.
This means that if the platform, whether it’s called Twitter or X or any other name, attracts users and they spend a significant amount of time on it, becoming part of their daily routine, these users won’t really care about the brand of the platform as long as it provides them with services that meet their needs.
Therefore, this naturally would turn into profits.
In other words, most companies and advertisers wouldn’t miss the opportunity to reach a massive audience like that of the former Twitter / X, just because they go against Musk or his views. What matters to them most is the profits, naturally.
This may be one of the main and important reasons that made Elon Musk not very concerned about
the buzz that occurred in the first week when [the master] Mark Zuckerberg’s Threeds app was launched to compete with Twitter.
Of course, what happened to Threads confirms Musk’s insightful perspective that the new competing application did not pose the danger it initially appeared to.
This is now confirmed by statistics and figures, especially after the rapid and sharp decline that Threads experienced in its first week, both in terms of the current number of active users on the app, which is currently around 13 million users,
reflecting a decrease of approximately 70% from the total number of registered users. Even in terms of the number of minutes spent on the app, some reports have revealed that they have decreased to an average of only 4 minutes per day for users.
The last thing I want to draw your attention to is that Elon Musk is one of the very few people in the world who have the luxury of failure.
Meaning that, he can try, invest, succeed, fail, try again, and again. The man is literally accustomed to endure lemon and roses.
This is in addition to the fact that he is not alone. Meaning that this luxury is not just vaile to him because of his wealth, as most of us imagine, but rather because of his network of relationships with investors and business owners all over the world,
and his ability to convince them to invest in his crazy and ambitious ideas and projects based on his successes in his current massive projects like Tesla and SpaceX, among others.
This gives him a pretty much free space of movement and a great ability to recover from losses.
That’s why we can’t rule out the possibility that he can actually do it and succeed in achieving the dream of an « everything » app, which is almost the only thing that no American or European company has been able to do in their tough markets until now.
I won’t take up too much of your time, let me conclude here.
As usual, I have a question for you: đ€Șđ
Do you think our MR Musk could actually succeed in making an « everything » app and turning it into the largest global financial institution?
Or are those just dreams of fiction novels and he will surpass them soon?
I will follow all your answers in the comments. Don’t forget to subscribe to the OTTO Magazin…đ
More importantly, tell your friends and loved ones about us, whether they are Arabs or English Speaking, they might enjoy the article and get them to know us.đđđđ
See you soon! đđ
Written by,
Otto Yassine.
Content Editor, & Ceo of OTTO Magazin.
WhatsApp: +212663069516
Em@il: otto.magazine@otto.ma