We regret to inform you Elon Musk wants to turn X into a dating app
You read that headline correctly.
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ELON MUSK: billionaire, entrepreneur, space tech pioneer, automotive CEO, Silicon Valley magnate, tunnel enthusiast, meme lover and nowā¦matchmaker? Yes, Musk has stated he wants to become the architect of true 140 character-based love, folks!
Last week, in celebration of its first anniversary under the ownership of Musk, X, the company formally known as Twitter, held a rare all-hands employee meeting. A transcript of the meeting has since been shared and published by The Verge, and it goes into detail about how Muskās long-term vision for X is to make it an āeverything appā. Despite reports that X is now only worth US$19 billion (AU $29 billion), down a whopping 57 per cent from the US$44 billion he purchased it for, the CEOās confidence has not been shaken, and he now wants to build X to be an all-reaching tech giant to replace YouTube, LinkedIn, FaceTime, Twitch/live streaming, the personal banking industry (!!) and dating apps.
During the meeting he told his staff he wishes to have control over X usersā āfinancial livesā, referring back to his PayPal days. And itās giving crypto bro-speak of 2021:
āI think payments and just generally being a financial hub is going to surprise people [with] just how powerful it is. I really understand this world, obviously. The X / PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks, actually, in July of 2000. For some reason, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. PayPal is a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.ā
He continued, noting that this is the vision he hopes to roll out by the end of 2024: āWhen I say payments, I actually mean someoneās entire financial life. If it involves money, itāll be on our platform ā money or securities or whatever. Itās not just, you know, send 20 bucks to my friend. Iām talking about, like, you wonāt need a bank account.ā
Iām selectively choosing to side the big banking claim for now because that is a murky pond I do not want to step intoāespecially when we start talking about the ever-growing importance of cyber security, encryption and the complicated future of global personal finance. But as someone recently single and who, through her profession, has had enough interactions with the Teslarati for one lifetime, the last thing I think we ever should be doing as a society is allowing the X Blue Ticks and Musk sycophants, who, you know, are so famous for their rationality, politeness, humanity, kindness and not at all unhinged behaviour and views, more access to women. Itās not like fans of the billionaireās products havenāt tried before, a Tesla enthusiast dating app has been floated around a few times before. But I digress.
During the meeting, X CEO Linda Yaccarino asked Musk about āX Datingā, and whether that was coming soon. āThereās already some stuff happening to some degree,ā replied the man queen of sick burns, Azealia Banks once knighted Apartheid Clyde. āBut I think we might be able to improve the dating situation. Part of it is how do you discover interesting people? Discovery is tough.ā I wonāt deny he could have something hereā¦
Currently, Twitter/X is not among the top seven social apps used in Australia, with only an estimated 10 per cent of our population using it, and granted, most are newsrooms and businesses, so for now, many Australians donāt engage with the app all that much. However, seeing as though dating apps are suffering a reputation hit these days, and the number of women actively using them is on the decline, X might have some success luring single people back, should this work out.
And I guess as one silver lining, if the app was to mine usersā interests, language, tweets and engagement metrics to match make and discover like-minded suiters, letās all just hope this means the awful people in this world find each other a lot more easily and just leave the rest of us alone in peace
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