Rebranding Twitter to X Is a Move Toward ‘Everything App,’ Musk Says

A photo illustration of the new Twitter logo in London on July 24, 2023. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Elon Musk said Twitter’s rebrand to X is just a step toward turning the social media platform into what he’s called an “everything app.”

“Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing,” Mr. Musk wrote in a Twitter post on July 24.

On Monday, Twitter started replacing its iconic blue bird logo with a single, stylized letter X. Meanwhile, the X.com web domain now redirects visitors to Twitter.com.

This is not the first time that Mr. Musk shared his vision of how Twitter should be. Just weeks before he finalized his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, he tweeted that “buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth—like birds tweeting—but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video,” Mr. Musk added.

The Twitter owner vowed to add more features to the app soon.

“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Mr. Musk added. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”

Elon Musk speaks during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023. Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images

‘Remarkable Ecosystem’

Since taking over Twitter, Mr. Musk has implemented several changes. Now, content creators meeting certain criteria are eligible to get a share of the company’s advertising revenue. Users also get the option to get verified under Twitter Blue, an opt-in monthly subscription.

Dinesh D'Souza, an author and filmmaker, spoke in his podcast on Tuesday about how he envisioned the Twitter app would become, particularly how the app would evolve with payment options.

“So Twitter becomes in a sense of finance app, you can have your money recorded on a part of Twitter, you can do transactions,” Mr. D'Souza said.

He added, “It could be that Elon Musk is sort of trying to put a lot of the banks out of business because banks after all have brick-and-mortar facilities, they have tellers, they charge money for transaction fees. And the idea here is that you remove all that—you bring all of that electronic, and you will have it all in one place.”

He predicted that Twitter would try to “consolidate people’s finance into a single app.”

If Mr. Musk could fulfill his ambitious plans for Twitter, Mr. D'Souza said there wouldn’t be any questioning about the Tesla chief having paid too much to buy the social media platform last year.

“If it turns out that he’s able to expand Twitter into this remarkable ecosystem of finance and video and communications, as well as good old tweeting, which I guess is now going to be called ‘X-ing’ because of the new name, then it will turn out perhaps in retrospect that for Twitter, Elon Musk paid too little,” he concluded.

‘Good Model’

Mr. Musk actually shared his vision for Twitter months before he bought it.

During the All-In Sumit in May 2022, Mr. Musk said China’s popular social media app WeChat could be “a good model,” if he were to buy Twitter at the right price.

“If you’re in China, basically, you kind of live on WeChat,” Mr. Musk said. “It does everything—sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things, and all rolled into one, with actually a great interface.”

“It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China. Such an app would be very useful,” he added.

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John Mac Ghlionn, a researcher and Epoch Times contributor, wrote in an op-ed published in June that Americans should be worried if they were to use an “everything app” or “super app” designed by Mr. Musk. He questioned why people should trust Mr. Musk with their personal information.

“When it comes to Musk’s ties to China, the evidence is irrefutable. After all, tens of thousands of Teslas are made in China every month. Moreover, Tencent Holdings, the company behind WeChat, has a sizable stake in Tesla,” Mr. Ghlionn wrote.

While a super-app offers great convenience, Mr. Ghlionn warned that there comes a cost.

“Imagine if hackers were to gain access to your super-app account. Everything from your private messages and photos to your bank account details would be exposed,” he explained.

“These are just some of the issues that a super-app could create. Musk wants to make X a reality, but we have every right to ask if we actually want to be part of his tech-fueled fantasy. I, for one, don’t.”

In May 2020, Canada-based digital watchdog Citizen Lab revealed in its report that WeChat monitored communications between its users outside of China in order to improve its algorithm to censor its China-based accounts.