Elon Musk and the Everything App
Elon Musk’s tenure as owner of X, formerly Twitter, has certainly divided opinion. While we won’t go into all the changes the world’s richest human being has made to the micro-blogging platform, it is incontestable that Musk has ambitious plans for the social media platform. In fact, it is erroneous to call it a microblogging platform, as X gives plenty of weight to video, long-form posting, and audio (Spaces). Musk’s plans will eventually revolve around payments, as he has made applications for payments services in many countries and US states. He wants X to be the home for everything you do, including financial transactions. This has been termed the Everything App.
Musk did not coin the idea of the Everything App, far from it. But it is an interesting ambition, not least because some critics don’t think it is possible to create one. We are accustomed to having a plethora of choices in the online arena, and many of the applications we use complement each other. For example, you’ll have little difficulty in using PayPal for an Amazon purchase. These are rival companies, but they work together seamlessly in the web’s ecosystem.
China has an Everything App
Nonetheless, we can find evidence of other Everything Apps, notably in China. WeChat is like Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Teams, Messenger, and PayPal all rolled into one. With well over one billion users, it is certainly a successful example of an Everything App, yet there are different rules of competition in China, and the blueprint might not necessarily translate in Europe and the United States.
One issue that crops up time and time again is that companies are not as successful when their focus is on multiple products rather than one. X itself has had this criticism in recent years, as Musk has removed one of the main characteristics that made Twitter so successful – its brevity with character limits. But it goes further than that. Some experts believe that adding too many dishes to the banquet can cause a dilution in quality. It follows the adage of choosing one tool that does one job well rather than a multi-tool that does several jobs adequately.
Dedicated gaming platforms excel
To explain, consider that Netflix now offers gaming, as does YouTube. Both platforms decided to add gaming to expand their appeal, and the games are fine. But do serious gamers play there? Not really. Gamers will choose dedicated platforms as they offer tailored experiences. Going further, we can look at sub-genres of gaming and entertainment, where players might visit sites like Hello Millions or Written Realms. These platforms do one thing – a specific type of gaming – and they do it well.
Musk envisages the future of X with elements like financial trading. This has caused a lot of excitement among the trading community on X, particularly crypto traders, but the same rules apply as they do to the gaming example above: expert traders would prefer to trade on dedicated platforms with years – decades, even – of expertise. There might be some advantages to buying stocks on X, but it is unlikely to have proprietary trading software, so it’s likely that the cons would outweigh the pros.
If he is to realize his goal, Musk must also look at where others have failed before, and the best place to look is at the rival social media platform, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg made several attempts to move Facebook into an Everything App. Some were successful, including Facebook Marketplace, whereas others, the Libra cryptocurrency, were expensive flops. But by and large, the attempts were futile. Facebook does not feel like an Everything App, even if it has some functions outside of Zuckerberg’s original vision.
We are used to switching apps
The irony, of course, is that not only is it difficult to entice people to an Everything App, there isn’t even a definitive social media app. How many readers have access to Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, and Snapchat? Most of us will hold accounts with more than one. And that’s the rub: Each platform does a different thing, and it does it well. Some might cater to different demographics, but having a focus on certain areas ameliorates the experience.
Today, so many of us are accustomed to using separate applications for different activities. You might use Gmail for work, WhatsApp for friends, X for finding out about politics, Netflix for entertainment, and Robinhood for trading – do we really desire to have them all under one roof? Many of these apps integrate seamlessly, and the time spent switching between them rarely feels like a chore. App developers always ask what problem is your app going to solve: And it feels like the Everything App is trying to solve a problem that does not exist.