![]() Half the global financial system, in this projection, would be conducted on an app that has 350 million users, and is constantly glitching out and running up against rate limits. This is a fundamentally unserious thing to say, but Musk was serious. “It would be by far the biggest financial institution.” “Essentially if done right, X would serve people’s financial needs to such a degree that over time it would become half of the global financial system,” Musk said. Fortunately, in a recent interview, Musk himself elaborated on his vision for X’s foray into finance. Twitter is now not merely a company but a “future state”!ĭespite the highfalutin framing, the only part of X described above that is not already in some way a part of Twitter is a means of making payments. It’s not the language that’s novel - such impenetrable buzzspeak has been the currency of Silicon Valley for decades - but that it was instantly put into action, in service of a product that remains equally abstract. This can be interpreted as an insistence the company will be able to do almost everything, but ultimately means next to nothing. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity,” she wrote, “centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking - creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. (“Sheets”? “Zeets”? “Exeets”? Your guess is as good as mine. Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley of today exist in another universe a vague notion issued from a tech billionaire’s lips can transform a network used by hundreds of millions of people, overnight.Īs a result, like so many of his fellow tech sector heavies, Musk - buffeted by unprecedented stores of capital, surrounded by yes men and a rapidly waning stock of good ideas - is becoming further untethered from the constraints of reality. The so-called PayPal mafia that would go on to dominate the tech world were then constrained by serving customers and the bottom line. The difference between these two epochs is pretty simple: money. This time, there is no board of directors at Twitter, because Musk dissolved it, and Musk feels he no longer needs to answer to anyone. An idea that most everyone else at the company was embarrassed to be associated with was nipped in the bud. The board, led by Peter Thiel, revolted, and ousted Musk. In the late 1990s, Musk was chief executive of PayPal, a successful payment processing company, and he wanted to turn that into X too. And what Musk has wanted, for decades, is to call a company “X.” This is, quite simply, the richest entrepreneur in world history doing what he wants, what his lizard brain tells him to do, when there is no one left in a position to advise him against doing it. There’s a paradox at the heart of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and other companies that rely on user-generated content - and it’s leading to their downfall. Technology and the Internet Column: Social media promised us democracy - but gave us dictatorships ![]() Why would Musk do this now, with so little planning or warning? Why would he do it at all? The tech world spent the following days trying to read the tea leaves, to game out Musk’s plans and motives for overhauling - some would say desecrating - one of the most recognizable names in tech. A reporter for TechCrunch, a website famous for reflecting Silicon Valley optimism, wrote, simply, “It’s trash.” Observers noted that the X logo made it look more like a porn company than a social platform. The Twitter name and bird logo are gone a slapped-together X now stands in their place.īloomberg reported that the move may wipe out as much as $20 billion in brand value - almost half of what Musk paid for it. ![]() Even so, Elon Musk’s sudden move over the weekend to transform Twitter, the social media company he purchased for $44 billion last year, into an entity obliquely named after the 24th letter of the alphabet, struck even his admirers as bizarre and ill-conceived. We all know that the world’s richest man is impetuous and more than happy to court controversy. ![]()
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