There is no lack of ideas in Elon Musk’s head about how to make Twitter the most wonderful platform that is ever feasible.
“Let me know if I’m pushing too far. I have a lot of ideas, but I need your feedback. I just want Twitter to reach its full potential of awesomeness.”
That was the text message that Elon Musk sent to Parag Agrawal, the CEO of the platform, in April 2022, soon after purchasing a 9% share on Twitter. After waiting another six months, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX will finally be free to take action.
After the deal is finalized, the billionaire will have complete control over the microblogging website, allowing him to expand it to four times its current size in terms of both the number of users and the amount of money. However, it is not simple to figure out what Elon Musk’s genuine aims are.
When Elon Musk does not answer with a straightforward emoji on Twitter, he is used to posting cryptic words and jokes that are dripping with sarcasm. In spite of this, Elon Musk has provided investors with a presentation and has made a few public appearances, which both provide insight into his strategy.
Transitioning to open source
One thing can be said for certain, and that is that Elon Musk aspires to make Twitter the preeminent venue for free expression. According to him, this “digital public square” would be a space where people of all different perspectives could voice their thoughts. On Thursday, October 27, 2022, Elon Musk sent a statement in which he said he was worried that social networks could become more divided along extreme political lines, with the far left on one side and the far right on the other.
What does Elon Musk want to accomplish with Twitter? … order to guarantee that “a broad range of viewpoints” may be discussed there “without resorting to violence.”
Elon Musk wants, among other things, to “open the hood” of Twitter and make its algorithm freely available to the public in order to facilitate more openness. Everyone who uses the internet will be able to see how the tweets are organized on the Twitter feed because of this. Because the algorithms form the core of the reactor and are extremely well-guarded because of this, such a project would be a game-changer in the world of social networks. Nevertheless, opening up the method would result in a lot of technical difficulties.
Another idea is to transform Twitter into a “super app” similar to the Chinese version of WeChat, which has been ingrained in the daily lives of one billion Chinese people to a greater extent than any other program. Even WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Uber have previously attempted to copy it, but none of their attempts have been successful.
Sending text and voice messages, paying with a mobile device, calling taxis, etc… WeChat combines features like Facebook, Instagram, Uber, and Apple Pay into one application. This is something that Musk intends to improve on for his Project X, which will make use of Twitter. Musk told the staff of the microblogging site in June 2022, “If we could do the same, or come near with Twitter, it would be a great success,” Musk added. “If we could do the same, or come close with Twitter.”
However, the economic model of such a revolutionary software would have nothing in common with the one that Twitter has used since the company’s inception in 2006, which is one that is predicated on advertising. Elon Musk has no intention of giving up on the project and instead plans to place his bets on a payment mechanism that is exclusive to the application. To put it another way, Twitter would charge users a fee whenever they made use of certain new features. For instance, supporting the efforts of another Twitter user by making a donation to them.
Elon Musk, who is enthusiastic about NFT and Web3, has dropped indications that these payments may be handled in bitcoin. Twitter was already one of the first sites to let non-fiat currencies to be displayed as a “profile picture,” and it was also one of the first platforms to permit payments to be made in cryptocurrencies.
Depending on memberships and subscriptions
The new CEO of Twitter has said that he plans to reduce the company’s reliance on advertisements by relying on a revised version of Twitter’s Blue membership service, which is scheduled to be released in 2021. Twitter presently provides extra capabilities for an additional fee of $5 per month. One of these features is the ability for the author of a tweet to amend it within half an hour of its publication.
In the spring of 2022, the billionaire indicated in a tweet that the price should probably be around $2 a month but paid in advance for twelve months. “The pricing should probably be about $2 a month,” The 159 million customers he aims to acquire by the year 2028 would not be subjected to advertising under these circumstances.
