Twitter Re-branding - What's Next For the Social Media Site
As you've probably heard, the social media site Twitter is going to be renamed to X, and doing away with the bird logo, and any other birds on the site. So, what's next for the platform? Are the changes just to try to save the company, similar to Facebook renaming to Meta, or is there greater plans for the future of the site.
Elon's promise of an "everything app"
Musk has revealed his plans in the past for an app, called X, which will be an "everything app." Which seems to mean they are expanding the scope of the app. No longer just for social media, but instead for anything and everything, similar to the Chinese app WeChat. Elon wants Twitter (now X) to be an essential part of everyday life, if you want to pay your bills, message your loved ones, or even buy products. All of it will supposedly be on X in the future (though, there's no set time frame as far as I know).
My worries
I'm a fan of much of what Elon has done, though, I'm not too sold on his changes at Twitter. The biggest change which I'm not too happy with is the paid API and restriction of access to the site for regular users. I'm a free (as in freedom) software enthusiast, and I was quite excited when Elon announced the Twitter algorithm was going open-source. I thought that he would make more good changes akin to that one, and I saw a bright future. Now, after some of the recent changes and news, I'm a bit more skeptical. A big worry with an "everything app" is privacy, it'd be quite literally giving X full control of everything in your life. Whereas now, while most people don't have any privacy from using sites like Google, and operating systems like Microsoft Windows, it is at least spread between multiple different companies. However, if X's Everything App is successful, many people would seem to be relying solely on X for everything. Say goodbye to any privacy or security you had left.
Conclusion
While there could be some good to come from the changes Elon is making for Twitter, I'm still rather skeptical. Because of some questionable changes at Twitter since he took control, I'm left not quite trusting him to run the site. Now, that's not to say I am not still a fan of Elon, and I like a lot of the good he has done. I'm just worried that if X becomes an "everything app", then a mega-company would then be in control of essentially every aspect of millions of people's lives. However, a lot of this is just speculation, and maybe Elon and Yaccarino are exaggerating when they say "everything app." Well, there's no way to know til it happens, so for now we're just along for the ride!