(a) seems very likely to me. Didn't he already speak about making Twitter a "super-app"? super-apps are a bit new to the American audience but in China / India they are surprisingly commonplace.
I won't be surprised if he churns through a bunch of different ideas: Subscriptions, Deals with news companies, short form videos + creator tools, different kinds of ad experiences, the edit button, better spam filtering etc.
There's a lot of potential things Twitter could be doing if they didn't limit themselves to their core product.
I don't think (b) is unlikely. Their current product is already highly valuable. You don't need their short form video product to succeed in a way TikTok did but there's enough of an audience to capture there to improve the company's valuation.
Maybe I'm living in a filter bubble, but I think it's going to be hard to build a "super app" that relies on the presence and active participation of reputable brands--publishers, if it's a news platform; businesses, if it's a b2c communications platform--when those brands are currently freaked out by the seemingly erratic behavior of the new CEO.
Even if Musk somehow learns to stop live-tweeting his trial-by-fire, the damage might be done: natural iterations on business plans and features will play into a by now near-universal stereotype of Musk as some sort of shoot-from-the-hip madman, which will deter business partners from committing.
(Like, if I'm Fox News or the NY Times, do I want to commit to publish on Musk's new platform when tomorrow he might get stoned and decide to offer hosting to the Daily Stormer? Or, if I'm Bank of America, do I want to commit to consumer payments when tomorrow Musk might pivot his "super app" to offering video shorts instead?)
Again, maybe I'm living in a bubble, but Musk's reputation seems like a huge impediment to, like, doing this. At all. Ever.
He has. But doesn’t the concept of a super app fly in direct opposition with some of his stated goals and issues regarding Twitter? He has ranted about bloat, both in terms of features, engineering, and employment at Twitter, and all his seemingly disastrous moves since taking over have been aimed at reducing bloat. And yet creating a “super app” sounds like it will be adding back in bloat orders of magnitude larger than whatever currently exists at Twitter.
I’m not sure anything Elon says about the current or future state of Twitter has any credibility. It seems like the company is now being directed via stream of consciousness at this point.
Good point you raise. Without broaching speculative argument as to the general state of Mr Musk’s consciousness-stream:
Giant, bloated organizations (and projects, and other things) can often be helped by reduced-size, highly-directed streams of consciousness suddenly making unilateral changes to them.
One way to term it— and there are many— is crisis restructuring. Whether Twitter was actually in crisis, and whether the unilateral stream of consciousness doing the restructuring is ”divinely inspired,” remains to be seen.
Twitter's cost was based on its market value. Expanding the portfolio, however, isn't as expensive, especially not when your new boss has all the money. That combined with its pull factors is why some people bet on Twitter coming around eventually.
On the other hand, exactly that development towards super-apps makes it even more important that we push for decentralization.
Not to mention that the US is already reigned by mono- and oligopolies in many markets, it is also a privacy disaster.
Many nations, especially in Asia, have little awareness of the concept of privacy. and thus its consequences, so it isn't surprising such offers took off so swiftly there.
You are correct, he did mention (a) as his intent in buying Twitter. Makes me think that he acquired Twitter for the users and wants to introduce those super-app features ASAP.
I won't be surprised if he churns through a bunch of different ideas: Subscriptions, Deals with news companies, short form videos + creator tools, different kinds of ad experiences, the edit button, better spam filtering etc.
There's a lot of potential things Twitter could be doing if they didn't limit themselves to their core product.
I don't think (b) is unlikely. Their current product is already highly valuable. You don't need their short form video product to succeed in a way TikTok did but there's enough of an audience to capture there to improve the company's valuation.