UNITED STATES—Understanding Elon Musk’s next strategy for anything is a complicated task. As a man of astonishing wealth and many big plans and designs, X could be one step too far or his most incredible idea yet.
Social media has blown open the doors to many possibilities, and Musk is doubling down on his plan to turn X into a place where people can do everything. His long-term strategy is to throw out a large net and tick as many boxes as possible that will bring social media users onto his site and spend more time browsing the app and checking out the features offered, old and new.
A Financial Powerhouse
Any industry that isn’t a traditional banking or financial service will invariably have difficulty moving into the sector. Some financial analysts believe that Musk has underestimated the gravity of turning a social media app into a secure banking service where people can send money or pay their friends in cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is an excellent example of a product that has been able to disrupt the traditional banking industry. While this move has come with a serious campaign and attempt to besmirch the sector as a whole, Musk has the power, wealth, and stature to defend himself from any attacks within the mainstream media. Cryptocurrency wallets and the ability to send payments were already significant app features. So Elon will use this to build his plans to turn X into the go-to mobile finance app.
Before he bought Twitter and turned it into X, the previous owner was a serious advocate of cryptocurrency and providing a platform where people could use it to send payments to each other. However, being able to then transform this from a small sector of the app to a website or app that holds millions of pieces of sensitive financial data is a considerable leap. It’s not an impossible task, but it will be difficult.
Gaming
As a multi-billion dollar market that has flourished through the internet and social media, Elon aims to corner off some of the gaming markets to bring people to Twitter. Free-to-play games like League Of Legends have proven to be a monstrous success globally, and for his self-proclaimed “everything” app to rival some of the top names online, he will be looking to host games to generate more activity on the site. It won’t just be free to play games, either.
Casino games like poker might be an avenue to explore because they unite people worldwide.
Casino websites have been one of this century’s most significant digital success stories, so Musk will be keen to use some inspiration from businesses that have utilized and implemented new technology to its maximum capacity. Poker brings strategy, skill, and technique. If the colossal app with over 300 million users can springboard the social element of its tremendously ambitious site, poker cash games for real money could be something that helps to generate more revenue and popularity for this constantly evolving social media colossus. Poker gaming is something millions of people enjoy, so finding people looking to play the game itself on X will not be an issue. If X wants to unite people and stream tournaments, this could further propel the San Francisco-based media behemoth.
News & Headlines
The number of people who get their news from Twitter & Instagram towers over traditional outlets like newspapers and televisions. A study from 2019 showed that over half of American adults got their news from social media, which has likely grown in the four years since this study. Twitter’s (X) scrolling feed is perfect for digesting quick news headlines. Although some people have spoken out about how it dilutes quality journalism and encourages clickbait articles, news travels instantly on the social media site due to some of its top features, such as the “trending” section.
However, there has been some criticism lately regarding Musk allegedly slowing down the X pages of extensive notable news outlets such as the NY Times and the BBC. However, this is one trend where X is a market leader, and major news corporations’ current stranglehold on the news continues to diminish yearly. This could be one area where Musk begins to make real progress quickly.
Conclusion
If not already, X could quickly become the number one global news source. It’ll be a more difficult proposition for the South African to make headway into the world of finance, which seems to be a more significant obstacle. Some analysts believe that when Musk first spent over $40 billion on Twitter that he overpaid for the service, but now that he is quickly turning the app into a completely new project, many initial detractors are warming to the idea that he might be turning the site and app into one of the most groundbreaking digital projects ever constructed.
