Just what we wanted! Another way to spend money.
Elon Musk is gonna do what he does.
Credit: Mashable illustration / Bob Al-Greene
It looks like X, the app formerly known as Twitter, is slowly but surely morphing into the “everything app” owner Elon Musk wants it to be by taking cues from Venmo and PayPal.
In a Tuesday blog post, the social media site announced it’s rolling out a peer-to-peer payment service to “revolutionize 2024,” whatever that means. The post doesn’t include any information about when or how that might launch, and Musk does have a track record of launching new features and then retracting them.
That said, X Payments is registered in at least 32 states, according to TechCrunch, and Musk has floated this idea for a while now, hoping to disrupt the banking industry. It’s at least something we know Musk could theoretically accomplish though, since he was one of the co-founders of PayPal.
X also announced that it is going to keep using AI to enhance search and improve ads, that it will continue to enhance its See Similar Posts feature, and will eventually launch a See Dissimilar Posts feature that will “empower users to explore content that aligns with their interests or challenges their perspectives based on their past activity.”
It also announced that it intends to continue to invest in creators, which is notable considering that influential creators like MrBeast have publicly called out the platform for its poor monetization tools.
This is all in Musk’s attempt to turn X into an “everything app.” But is that what its users want? After all, X is now worth 71 percent less than what Musk paid for it, and it’s going to take more than peer-to-peer payment opportunities to bring people back to the app.
Christianna Silva is a Senior Culture Reporter at Mashable. They write about tech and digital culture, with a focus on Facebook and Instagram. Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow them on Twitter @christianna_j.
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