Following X’s first gathering with the newly reformed Client Council, Boardroom details some of the platform’s plans on the road to becoming the all-encompassing app.
Are tweets still a thing over at X, or are they just called posts now?
It’s unclear, but we can confirm that much has changed since Twitter officially became X in July and kick-started its goal of becoming the “global town square.” Today, we’re getting updates and news from the Elon Musk-owned platform every day. For instance, am I the only one who missed Twitter Blue‘s rebrand as “X Premium?” While the original Twitter Blue program went offline for a few months early this year, Musk is still making changes to the relaunched offering to attract more users to the program.
In a recent conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk teased new lower-priced X Premium tiers to attract more users to pay for that verified check. As it stands, a monthly X Premium subscription comes with the famous blue check and exclusive access to certain features on the platform. Following the Netanyahu conversation, several media outlets wrote that Musk had said that X would become entirely paywalled in the near future, but the exec later denied that his remarks were as sweeping as that.
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Musk still appears highly involved in the day-to-day operations over at X, but don’t forget that there was an actual transfer of CEO power to Linda Yaccarino in May. You can often find Yaccarino tweeting (posting?) her vision for the evolution of X to the “everything app” — when Musk bought X and took it private, he shared his master idea to turn the platform into an all-encompassing app that would operate as a sort of super-hub for everything you do on the internet, from money transfers to video conferencing, microblogging, live streaming, searching, and more.
So, what does that actually mean, and what’s in store for the future?
I’m still trying to wrap my head around how everything connects in one place, but we’re following along. Here’s what we know so far.
Updates at X
Yaccarino and the platform’s management team doubled down on Musk’s ambitions after sharing an overview of X’s latest developments and plans at X’s newly reconstituted Client Council last week, a gathering of X leadership and key stakeholders focused on updating and improving the ever-evolving platform. Decision-makers were able to ask questions and get an insider look at what X has been building. X’s team also shared some newly released and soon-to-be-released features on the platform, including long-form blog posts, video calls, creator subscriptions, and product and job listings.
One feature that stood out to me was X’s in-app payments system, but I’ll be the first to tell you the mock-up images were not good and didn’t seem real.
X has been experimenting with an in-app shopping feature for a while, and it seems like the platform is still fine-tuning that feature. The platform is reportedly working on improving content reporting to make it easier for users to raise concerns.
Since X rebranded as such over the summer, weekly active users have declined, though Musk will report otherwise or shy away from sharing those numbers. In that interview with the Prime Minister, X’s owner did say the platform has 550 million monthly active users. Before Musk’s X takeover last year, the platform reported attracting around 260 million monthly active users, so if Musk is telling us the truth, I guess his master plan is working in some way.
Tech investor Chris Messina unearthed that X’s upcoming audio and video calling features that will be built into the platform’s DMs will only be available to X Premium members, which means only verified X users will be able to indulge in the feature with each other. The outlet also reported findings from a researcher named Travis Brown, who has been tracking X Premium’s success via GitHub. He discovered that out of all the platform’s millions of users, only roughly 1 million are subscribed to X Premium. We learned earlier this year that Musk “gifted” verified badges to certain notable users on the platform, so we can assume they are included in that number as well.
Stay tuned for more on X’s progress.
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