The Challenges and Opportunities of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover: A Discussion of Threads, X, and the Future of Social Media

As I sit here, I'm reminded that my plan is to get people to trust us by letting them look into the back end of their accounts. It's a bold move, but one that could pay off in the long run. The idea is to create a sense of transparency and accountability, which will be essential in building trust with users. By giving people access to administrative controls, we're essentially saying that we want to be transparent about how we handle user data.

But let's not forget the elephant in the room: Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur has been making waves on Twitter, both with his tweets and his newfound enthusiasm for the platform. His plan to rename the app from Twitter to X is just one example of his willingness to shake things up. But what does this mean for the future of social media? Will X be a game-changer, or will it be another failed experiment?

One thing is certain: Elon Musk knows how to get attention. He's been using Twitter to share updates about his companies, including his ambitious plans for self-driving cars and solar energy. The man seems to have a knack for recapturing attention on the platform, even as new features like threads and following feeds roll out. But what sets him apart from other users? Is it his willingness to take risks, or is it something more?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to one conclusion: Elon Musk has zero capability to execute on these plans. He's fired everyone who's working with him, including Esther Crawford, the woman who used to be in charge of Twitter's user growth team. That's not exactly the kind of leadership that inspires confidence. And yet, despite all this, he still manages to capture attention and build momentum.

Take the recent rollout of threads, for example. The new feature is supposed to make it easier for users to engage with each other on Twitter, but I've seen very little volume on threads so far. It's almost as if the feature has been introduced solely to get people talking about it. And that's exactly what Elon Musk does best: capturing attention.

But beyond all the hype and fanfare, there's one thing that's worth paying attention to: the web version of X. Both Zuckerberg and Adam Assar have said they're going to roll out a web app in response to Twitter's new features. This is likely going to be the key to unlocking user growth for X, but it also raises some interesting questions about how the platform will handle its users.

For example, what happens when you're scrolling through your timeline and suddenly get dropped into the following feed? It's not exactly a sticky preference, which can be frustrating for users who want more control over their experience. And yet, that's exactly the kind of feature that Elon Musk seems to be leaning towards.

One thing is certain: Elon Musk has changed his name from Twitter to X. The change has been implemented on Android devices, but not on iOS, which raises some interesting questions about the platform's priorities. But beyond all the changes and updates, there's one thing that remains the same: the need for transparency and accountability in social media.

As I look back on my own plan for building trust with users, I'm reminded of the importance of being transparent and open. It's not always easy, but it's essential if we want to build a platform that people can rely on. And so, as we move forward into an uncertain future, one thing is clear: Elon Musk may be shaking things up on Twitter, but he's also giving us a lot to think about.

The statistic that I've seen is both fascinating and terrifying. It seems to show that no one other than Elon Musk uses X, at least not yet. And yet, despite this lack of adoption, the platform still manages to capture attention and build momentum. It's almost as if there's something magical about it, something that sets it apart from other social media platforms.

But what is it? Is it the name change from Twitter to X? Or is it something more profound? I'm not sure, but one thing is certain: Elon Musk has captured our attention in a way that few others have. And as we move forward into an uncertain future, one thing is clear: we'll be watching with bated breath to see what happens next.

In the end, it's all about capturing attention and building momentum. Elon Musk knows how to do this, but he also knows how to get under our skin. The man has a way of making us question everything we think we know about social media. And as we navigate the complexities of X, one thing is certain: we'll be watching with great interest to see what happens next.

The recent rollout of threads on Twitter is a prime example of this phenomenon. The new feature is supposed to make it easier for users to engage with each other, but I've seen very little volume on threads so far. It's almost as if the feature has been introduced solely to get people talking about it. And that's exactly what Elon Musk does best: capturing attention.

But beyond all the hype and fanfare, there's one thing that's worth paying attention to: the web version of X. Both Zuckerberg and Adam Assar have said they're going to roll out a web app in response to Twitter's new features. This is likely going to be the key to unlocking user growth for X, but it also raises some interesting questions about how the platform will handle its users.

For example, what happens when you're scrolling through your timeline and suddenly get dropped into the following feed? It's not exactly a sticky preference, which can be frustrating for users who want more control over their experience. And yet, that's exactly the kind of feature that Elon Musk seems to be leaning towards.

One thing is certain: Elon Musk has changed his name from Twitter to X. The change has been implemented on Android devices, but not on iOS, which raises some interesting questions about the platform's priorities. But beyond all the changes and updates, there's one thing that remains the same: the need for transparency and accountability in social media.

As I look back on my own plan for building trust with users, I'm reminded of the importance of being transparent and open. It's not always easy, but it's essential if we want to build a platform that people can rely on. And so, as we move forward into an uncertain future, one thing is clear: Elon Musk may be shaking things up on Twitter, but he's also giving us a lot to think about.

The future of social media is uncertain, but one thing is certain: Elon Musk will be watching it closely. The man has a way of making us question everything we think we know about social media. And as we navigate the complexities of X, one thing is clear: we'll be watching with great interest to see what happens next.

In conclusion, the challenges and opportunities of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover are complex and multifaceted. On the one hand, there's a sense of excitement and possibility that comes with his name change from Twitter to X. But on the other hand, there are also concerns about transparency and accountability in social media.

One thing is certain: Elon Musk has captured our attention in a way that few others have. The man has a way of making us question everything we think we know about social media. And as we move forward into an uncertain future, one thing is clear: we'll be watching with great interest to see what happens next.

The web version of X is likely going to be the key to unlocking user growth for the platform. But it also raises some interesting questions about how the platform will handle its users. Will it prioritize transparency and accountability, or will it continue down a path that prioritizes profit over people? Only time will tell.

But for now, one thing is certain: Elon Musk has given us a lot to think about. The man has shaken things up on Twitter, and we're left to wonder what the future holds. One thing is clear: we'll be watching with great interest to see how it all plays out.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enlet's start with uh when I promise we'll move through this quickly the the weirdest news of the week uh which is Elon sort of flippantly renaming Twitter to X basically by by tweet Fiat like he just tweeted it into existence and then everyone had to pretend it was the plan Richard even on top of this tell me what's going on here it kind of started this weekend Elon has been talking about rebranding Twitter as X pretty much since he started to take over take it over he made hit this x company its parent company a while ago and then this weekend he just went ahead and did it he said we're X now he hadn't changed anything everything on the site still said Twitter and even now it still kind of says Twitter all over the place but he says that they're not tweets anymore they're they're X's or I don't know I don't know how you pronounced that I haven't really gotten that far into it we've got a logo that is a letter X it might just be a font it might have changed a little bit we don't know it's gone he changed it back and then he changed it to another thing it got wider it got narrower but this is where we live now it's X it's not Twitter it's it's X even though it says Twitter everywhere it says Twitter everywhere the domain is still Twitter uh he no one knows what to call it tweet anymore there's some argument that you have to call them zits no no that's what the people say I'm sorry I have strong I think I know I'm a big proponent of calling them all tweets even the threads into the other ones and I've come around they're all posts now now that Twitter's dead they're all posts now I'm not calling them zets don't don't come at me with that well your argument makes more sense now you can call anything a Tweet now because they don't care you can but that's like I'm just like having to differentiate and be like oh yeah did you see that thread tweet did you see that X all right did you see that post yeah like I'm like okay I guess posts it is you guys wore me down I'm like I couldn't hold strong yeah much like everyone who works at X now they couldn't stop him so a lot of people have tried to retcon what is happening here we've talked a lot about how Elon has said he wants Twitter now X to be an everything app along the lines of China's WeChat that's a big concept to unpack but I just want to call out Linda yakarina who is the CEO of x nominally in charge of this this company had a tweet thread an X thread about what she thinks this thing is going to turn into Alex I just want you to read it to us it is incredible I'm not going to read the entire thing but I'm going to read one of the relevant posts because we're not calling them tweets anymore tweets are dead X is the future state of unlimited interactivity centered in a audio video messaging payments banking creating a global Marketplace for ideas Goods services and opportunities powered by AI X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning to imagine yeah now I understand that Linda was the former head of advertising for NBC Universal this is AD copy it's like I think everyone understands she was the former ad exec now once you're everything you are nothing I just I I believe in focus more than anything what this reminds me of more than anything I swear to God the first thing I thought of when I read this is the speech that big brother gives in Apple's 1984 ads where he's like with the information purification directive we have achieved total world domination you will be free from the shackles of conflicting thoughts like workers of the World Unite and then the lady throws the hammer through it and they're like we made the Macintosh go watch that ad and which side of that story do you want to be on like the big brother side or the lady with the hammer like we're the lady with the hammer that's where the Verge has always lived I love that they just like announced that they basically want like a some sort of Monopoly they're like we are out to build a monopoly for everything and control all things and it's like well that's actually a bad pitch like I mean it's it's a great picture you can pull it off but this idea that you're going to start by rebranding the company to X and then you will with somehow with AI but like you know she's a marketer because she's like powered by AI that was the best part like a minute ago she would have been like powered by nfts X will be the future state of inert like whatever it is tell me your marketing executive without telling me your marketing executive yes X is a self-driving car like whatever it is uh centered in audio video messaging payments to make it you know what's not in there is tweets centered in audio isn't that messaging I don't think that's messaging we're talking about this is the best app to watch the Super Mario Brothers movie on right it's that one uh so just incredible right like it's part of and Linda will be at the code conference this year uh Julie burson's gonna interview her that's in September we're very excited about it many questions to ask but you just look at this vision for what they want X to be and it's funny to make fun of it and it is a lot of marketing but you can see why they're saying this this is WeChat like there are apps like this super apps all around the world Facebook pursued a super app model for a long time they have discovered that in the United States Market in particular you need multiple apps like you just can't do it the way that you can do it in China I think line is an app like this uh in Japan there's other countries where this model works so you see why you would say it you want a messaging app that does payments and Banking and hotel reservations and all the other stuff that WeChat can do it has a extensible plug-in architecture there's actually a long argument that the cell phone market in China is more competitive than anywhere else because the application layer is in WeChat so it's easier to switch between platforms because then you just download WeChat and run everything in WeChat and it doesn't matter and you can pick like a camera or a form factor or whatever because at the end of the day all your apps are running WeChat you can feel any way you want about that including that the Chinese government is almost certainly scanning WeChat at all times because it's like an oppressive whatever but that's the argument right that this exists somewhere at scale and makes them a lot of money and has all kinds of weird Downstream effects on on like gadgets cool you have Twitter you're starting from the base of Twitter which is so creaky right now you had to impose rate limits on the API and it kind of doesn't work and it's like full of like weird blue check spam elon's doing anti-vaxx conspiracies like this week how are you how are you going to get from here to there there there's no plan as far as I can see well I think the first step is that you reveal that your your uh Executives will allow people to look into the back end of people's accounts pretty much it will and that's how you're going to get that trust for people to use this as a banking and payments app just to say that we're going to do the files we're going to let people we're gonna let people have administrative access and look into accounts whenever they want to I mean that's uh that's true that's what you want again if your plan is WeChat you're like how do we do some Chinese government stuff that's like the selling point let's let's begin so that's that that's like the broad Strokes I I think that he did it to get attention I think Elon is a master of getting attention I also think that all he he makes all of his Twitter news on the weekends say what you want about him like he's obviously not doesn't give a about Twitter Monday through Friday right he's like worried about his companies that make money and then like the white wine starts flowing on Friday night and Twitter's plans change by Sunday evening like that's the news cycle we're in with pretty pretty enforced consistency I think he's good at getting attention I think that he sees what's happening with threads we can talk about threads the following feed and stuff they introduced but he's got to keep continuously recapturing attention for Twitter because that's the entire game he's in so I'm going to change the name to X screw it we're doing it tonight send me some logos it's a great way to capture it has kept him in the conversation even as threads rolls out following feed I think in a few weeks Federal a web app that's what I'm seriously saying by the time threads rolls out a web app elon's gonna be like it is a self-driving car X is making a self-driving car I've merged it with Tesla like that's just where his brain is to capture attention I just don't think he's got the capability to do any of this stuff because he fired everybody he has zero capability to do it and it's like okay you renamed it you're capturing attention is that attention turning into users and or money as measured by uh user seconds in the app yes oh the statistic that is so great that absolutely no one other than Elon Musk uses and no one seems to understand exactly what it is but judging by that statistic yes he is winning and that brings us to now where we've got all these things he's sort of changed his name he is he's mostly changed his name has changed on Android but not on iOS as I'm speaking maybe by the time you hear this it will have changed in the IOS app Twitter has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can study or I'm sorry X has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can stay verified we had Esther Crawford uh characters coming back from past Seasons suddenly pop up talking about what it was like to work at Twitter until she was fired and sleeping on the floor and how Elon listens to whoever just happens to be around and takes random ideas yeah is there is there anything else we haven't discussed we just the one thing I want to point out is threads rolled out its following feed this week uh great it's cool it immediately showcases how little volume there is on threads like I've had a lot of people on threads everyone's still posting on Twitter so that hasn't happened yet I think it won't happen until they roll out the web version which both Zuckerberg and Adam assari have said they're going to do uh Emissary in response to Casey Zucker we're going to responds to Lauren good so Verge Alumni network out there getting us what we need uh but if you don't have the web version it's very hard for True posters to keep up the pace so I think that's like coming um but you can't leave the app stuck in the following feed it's not a sticky preference it defaults you whenever if your phone if your app gets pushed out of memory or reboots in any way or even it seems like just whenever it feels like it it'll drop you back into the algorithmic feed which is just a pure pain in the ass and they should just make that setting sticky and that's just respecting user preferences like I don't I don't feel like I'm being a diva about this it's like I set the preference leave it alone like my car is not like I've moved the seat around to what I think will be more appropriate for you it's like just leave it it seems very simple to me uh it's a real clippy move it's surreal it sounds it seems like you're what you want is the Nugget account like here it is againlet's start with uh when I promise we'll move through this quickly the the weirdest news of the week uh which is Elon sort of flippantly renaming Twitter to X basically by by tweet Fiat like he just tweeted it into existence and then everyone had to pretend it was the plan Richard even on top of this tell me what's going on here it kind of started this weekend Elon has been talking about rebranding Twitter as X pretty much since he started to take over take it over he made hit this x company its parent company a while ago and then this weekend he just went ahead and did it he said we're X now he hadn't changed anything everything on the site still said Twitter and even now it still kind of says Twitter all over the place but he says that they're not tweets anymore they're they're X's or I don't know I don't know how you pronounced that I haven't really gotten that far into it we've got a logo that is a letter X it might just be a font it might have changed a little bit we don't know it's gone he changed it back and then he changed it to another thing it got wider it got narrower but this is where we live now it's X it's not Twitter it's it's X even though it says Twitter everywhere it says Twitter everywhere the domain is still Twitter uh he no one knows what to call it tweet anymore there's some argument that you have to call them zits no no that's what the people say I'm sorry I have strong I think I know I'm a big proponent of calling them all tweets even the threads into the other ones and I've come around they're all posts now now that Twitter's dead they're all posts now I'm not calling them zets don't don't come at me with that well your argument makes more sense now you can call anything a Tweet now because they don't care you can but that's like I'm just like having to differentiate and be like oh yeah did you see that thread tweet did you see that X all right did you see that post yeah like I'm like okay I guess posts it is you guys wore me down I'm like I couldn't hold strong yeah much like everyone who works at X now they couldn't stop him so a lot of people have tried to retcon what is happening here we've talked a lot about how Elon has said he wants Twitter now X to be an everything app along the lines of China's WeChat that's a big concept to unpack but I just want to call out Linda yakarina who is the CEO of x nominally in charge of this this company had a tweet thread an X thread about what she thinks this thing is going to turn into Alex I just want you to read it to us it is incredible I'm not going to read the entire thing but I'm going to read one of the relevant posts because we're not calling them tweets anymore tweets are dead X is the future state of unlimited interactivity centered in a audio video messaging payments banking creating a global Marketplace for ideas Goods services and opportunities powered by AI X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning to imagine yeah now I understand that Linda was the former head of advertising for NBC Universal this is AD copy it's like I think everyone understands she was the former ad exec now once you're everything you are nothing I just I I believe in focus more than anything what this reminds me of more than anything I swear to God the first thing I thought of when I read this is the speech that big brother gives in Apple's 1984 ads where he's like with the information purification directive we have achieved total world domination you will be free from the shackles of conflicting thoughts like workers of the World Unite and then the lady throws the hammer through it and they're like we made the Macintosh go watch that ad and which side of that story do you want to be on like the big brother side or the lady with the hammer like we're the lady with the hammer that's where the Verge has always lived I love that they just like announced that they basically want like a some sort of Monopoly they're like we are out to build a monopoly for everything and control all things and it's like well that's actually a bad pitch like I mean it's it's a great picture you can pull it off but this idea that you're going to start by rebranding the company to X and then you will with somehow with AI but like you know she's a marketer because she's like powered by AI that was the best part like a minute ago she would have been like powered by nfts X will be the future state of inert like whatever it is tell me your marketing executive without telling me your marketing executive yes X is a self-driving car like whatever it is uh centered in audio video messaging payments to make it you know what's not in there is tweets centered in audio isn't that messaging I don't think that's messaging we're talking about this is the best app to watch the Super Mario Brothers movie on right it's that one uh so just incredible right like it's part of and Linda will be at the code conference this year uh Julie burson's gonna interview her that's in September we're very excited about it many questions to ask but you just look at this vision for what they want X to be and it's funny to make fun of it and it is a lot of marketing but you can see why they're saying this this is WeChat like there are apps like this super apps all around the world Facebook pursued a super app model for a long time they have discovered that in the United States Market in particular you need multiple apps like you just can't do it the way that you can do it in China I think line is an app like this uh in Japan there's other countries where this model works so you see why you would say it you want a messaging app that does payments and Banking and hotel reservations and all the other stuff that WeChat can do it has a extensible plug-in architecture there's actually a long argument that the cell phone market in China is more competitive than anywhere else because the application layer is in WeChat so it's easier to switch between platforms because then you just download WeChat and run everything in WeChat and it doesn't matter and you can pick like a camera or a form factor or whatever because at the end of the day all your apps are running WeChat you can feel any way you want about that including that the Chinese government is almost certainly scanning WeChat at all times because it's like an oppressive whatever but that's the argument right that this exists somewhere at scale and makes them a lot of money and has all kinds of weird Downstream effects on on like gadgets cool you have Twitter you're starting from the base of Twitter which is so creaky right now you had to impose rate limits on the API and it kind of doesn't work and it's like full of like weird blue check spam elon's doing anti-vaxx conspiracies like this week how are you how are you going to get from here to there there there's no plan as far as I can see well I think the first step is that you reveal that your your uh Executives will allow people to look into the back end of people's accounts pretty much it will and that's how you're going to get that trust for people to use this as a banking and payments app just to say that we're going to do the files we're going to let people we're gonna let people have administrative access and look into accounts whenever they want to I mean that's uh that's true that's what you want again if your plan is WeChat you're like how do we do some Chinese government stuff that's like the selling point let's let's begin so that's that that's like the broad Strokes I I think that he did it to get attention I think Elon is a master of getting attention I also think that all he he makes all of his Twitter news on the weekends say what you want about him like he's obviously not doesn't give a about Twitter Monday through Friday right he's like worried about his companies that make money and then like the white wine starts flowing on Friday night and Twitter's plans change by Sunday evening like that's the news cycle we're in with pretty pretty enforced consistency I think he's good at getting attention I think that he sees what's happening with threads we can talk about threads the following feed and stuff they introduced but he's got to keep continuously recapturing attention for Twitter because that's the entire game he's in so I'm going to change the name to X screw it we're doing it tonight send me some logos it's a great way to capture it has kept him in the conversation even as threads rolls out following feed I think in a few weeks Federal a web app that's what I'm seriously saying by the time threads rolls out a web app elon's gonna be like it is a self-driving car X is making a self-driving car I've merged it with Tesla like that's just where his brain is to capture attention I just don't think he's got the capability to do any of this stuff because he fired everybody he has zero capability to do it and it's like okay you renamed it you're capturing attention is that attention turning into users and or money as measured by uh user seconds in the app yes oh the statistic that is so great that absolutely no one other than Elon Musk uses and no one seems to understand exactly what it is but judging by that statistic yes he is winning and that brings us to now where we've got all these things he's sort of changed his name he is he's mostly changed his name has changed on Android but not on iOS as I'm speaking maybe by the time you hear this it will have changed in the IOS app Twitter has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can study or I'm sorry X has tried to push businesses into buying more ads so they can stay verified we had Esther Crawford uh characters coming back from past Seasons suddenly pop up talking about what it was like to work at Twitter until she was fired and sleeping on the floor and how Elon listens to whoever just happens to be around and takes random ideas yeah is there is there anything else we haven't discussed we just the one thing I want to point out is threads rolled out its following feed this week uh great it's cool it immediately showcases how little volume there is on threads like I've had a lot of people on threads everyone's still posting on Twitter so that hasn't happened yet I think it won't happen until they roll out the web version which both Zuckerberg and Adam assari have said they're going to do uh Emissary in response to Casey Zucker we're going to responds to Lauren good so Verge Alumni network out there getting us what we need uh but if you don't have the web version it's very hard for True posters to keep up the pace so I think that's like coming um but you can't leave the app stuck in the following feed it's not a sticky preference it defaults you whenever if your phone if your app gets pushed out of memory or reboots in any way or even it seems like just whenever it feels like it it'll drop you back into the algorithmic feed which is just a pure pain in the ass and they should just make that setting sticky and that's just respecting user preferences like I don't I don't feel like I'm being a diva about this it's like I set the preference leave it alone like my car is not like I've moved the seat around to what I think will be more appropriate for you it's like just leave it it seems very simple to me uh it's a real clippy move it's surreal it sounds it seems like you're what you want is the Nugget account like here it is again\n"