We understand the desire to demonstrate to others that you are correct. I am sympathetic to Elon Musk’s ill-advised idea to rename Twitter and transform it into his long-desired financial heavyweight.
He wasn’t right when he tried to rename PayPal and build an Internet banking upstart in 2000, and he’s not right today. But it won’t stop him from attempting to Show Us. Musk has stated that he wishes to rename Twitter X, and the Twitter logo on the app has already been altered to a Unicode X.
Musk and X have a history: when Peter Thiel fired Musk from it, it was because Musk wanted to rebrand it. You’ll never guess what he wanted to alter his name to. Musk founded X.com in 1999, which sounds like an early version of what Musk is attempting with the artist once known as Twitter: electronic payments, checking accounts, stock exchanges, and mutual funds.
The only thing lacking is quote-tweet dunks. “This sounds kind of like WeChat,” you’re right! X was a massively profitable corporation that merged with Thiel’s Confinity, another massively good company that invented PayPal. Musk took over as CEO of the combined firms, with Thiel stepping down.
Many of Thiel’s deputies, though, remained, notably David Sacks, who is now a VC, podcaster, and would-be political influencer. Despite user feedback that it wasn’t a brilliant idea, Musk wanted to modify the famous PayPal branding to X. According to The PayPal Wars by Eric M.
Jackson, Sacks decided that wouldn’t happen and was one of the architects of the coup that deposed Musk. Give credit where credit is due: Sacks made an excellent decision here. Making your payments company sound like a porn company is not a good idea for branding.
I’m perplexed by Twitter’s rebranding; Sacks knows better, and he’s participating. Casey Newton, a colleague and occasional drinking companion, has stated that the X makeover is effectively a strategy to end Twitter. We disagree that this is simply an act of cultural vandalism, albeit it is.
We Believe what is happening is less planned — Musk most likely did not intend to buy Twitter at all, and once he was stuck with it, he decided to see if he could use it to do some unfinished business.
Musk is learning that he is inept at running a social network company. His modifications in moderation — allowing Donald Trump, various white nationalists, and some conspiracy theorist who was uploading child sexual assault material to continue using his platform — had scared the living daylights out of advertisers, who were Twitter’s primary source of revenue before Musk bought it.
Now, Twitter advertisements are on sale because it appears that brands are concerned about appearing next to videos of animal brutality. Musk threatens that firms will lose verification if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 in the last 30 days or $6,000 in the previous 180 days.
Twitter has never been the most popular social networking platform, but this is a new low. So Musk is attempting to move to something he believes he understands better: digital payments. After all, despite Musk, PayPal was a huge success and made him a lot of money.
We’ve already discussed Musk’s plans for a payment app. For a long, the so-called super app has been a Silicon Valley fixation, inspired by the success of China’s WeChat. These fantastic apps combine Twitter, Instagram, Slack, Venmo, and your bank’s app.
We can see why; our Silicon Valley rulers are fascinated with power – money is merely how the powerful keep score — and owning such an app would entail a lot of energy. You may also check out the official tweets, which can be found below-
Elon Musk wants a second chance to fail at X https://t.co/OWlSVG8KXK pic.twitter.com/mCC31uhhe5
— TechFishNews (@TechFishNews) August 1, 2023
The reality is that banks — and, with FedNow, the actual Federal Reserve — have kept up with technology developments in the United States in ways they haven’t done elsewhere, where mega applications have risen to power. JPMorgan Chase is perhaps one of the world’s most essential technology corporations.
In the United States, app shops are a second impediment to the mega app. Both Google and Apple take a percentage of any digital transaction so that you can buy cat litter but not an ebook through your Amazon app.
The collaboration of both of those app stores would be critical for the success of any super app, and it is not guaranteed because such an excellent app may compete with Google Pay and Apple Pay. “But Liz,” you may object, “isn’t that an antitrust issue?” Yes, my darling, it is — and based on what I’ve seen so far in app store antitrust lawsuits, I don’t think any super app rival stands a chance.
- Elon Musk Places Giant X Logo Atop Twitter HQ
- Twitter Gets a New Look Under Elon Musk’s Ownership
- Elon Musk Has Announced His Successor as CEO of Twitter
Taking over the @X account after the rushed redesign, rather than before, is part of what appears to be an inferior approach to pursuing the mega app fantasy. It also fits Musk’s penchant for trying to force his ideas on individuals who aren’t interested. During Musk’s PayPal days, he tried to urge consumers to upgrade to corporate accounts via an obnoxious pop-up targeting PayPal’s most regular users.
The outcry was quick and severe, and while relatively few accounts were cancelled, only “about one-fifth of our targeted sellers voluntarily upgraded,” Jackson writes.
According to the outcome of Twitter Blue, Musk did not learn his lesson. You must provide a service that people want to pay for; simply taking away what people have grown accustomed to and informing them that those services now need payment is insufficient. More than that, the haphazard process of becoming X will likely frighten anyone considering banking with him.
Here are some things I don’t want my bank to do: abrupt, frequent service modifications; regular service outages; new fees added at random; white supremacists; trouble with verification; spam and fraud.
We’re all watching Musk make some significant public changes very quickly, and the manner he’s gone about even changing the sign on the Twitter buildings hasn’t instilled confidence. For example, the cops prevented Musk from replacing the Twitter sign because he failed to obtain a permit. Even the new X sign sparked an investigation due to shoddy workmanship — and it is now being removed.
Banking has a long history of financial shenanigans: wildcat banking, counterfeiting, embezzlement, creative accounting, fraud, money laundering, you name it. Regulation, which not everyone likes, has been the solution in the US banking sector. As a result, crypto is “fixing” regulation by avoiding it, resulting in a dizzying assortment of hacks and exploits, embezzlement, creative accounting, fraud, money laundering, and so on.
Banking is highly regulated, and for good reason, as cryptocurrency enthusiasts have discovered the hard way. Leave aside the technical aspects of creating a fantastic app — the technical part is relatively simple.
The most challenging aspect is social! Trust is the basis of finance. That is what those rules are for! Consider Musk’s actions about laws in general and, at Twitter, about the social stuff. Ask yourself, and be honest: do you trust this man with your money?
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