Dare to look: we might see the first American super app
It’s been a roller-coaster of a business story since the day Elon Musk laid his eyes on Twitter: and roller-coasters are well-planned toys.
If you are interested in digital marketing, you must have been following the extraordinary spectacle of Elon Musk’s Twitter story -a spectacle shaped by his passion for the platform itself and his ability to bring cheers from his audience.
During this spectacle, he often appears as an impulsive character with knee-jerk actions. As a “man-child” as many call him.
That’s a comfortable take on this story. If you want to stay in the zone where “people I don’t like are always wrong and they always make wrong business decisions”, don’t let me disturb you.
I, for one, don’t like that zone. People we like often mess things up and those we don’t like might deserve a closer look.
None of us can claim to really know those media personalities. But from the limited information I have, I don’t like how Elon Musk manages his business. I don’t like his approach to his employees and his users. I still want to understand what is happening.
Because an “impulsive man-child” who can plan and sell space rocket operations sounds like an oxymoron to me.
There is more to this story.
If we dare to take a more realistic approach, this man risked losing his investment for the sake of resetting the company and the existing team. “Was it necessary?” is another question. “Would I do it?” is completely irrelevant.
If we dare to put aside our urge to resist the fact that the Twitter we loved is changing into something different, we can read the obvious breadcrumbs Musk has left all over the place.
He has been openly telling his plan from the beginning. The problem is not that he is hiding his plan. On the contrary: what he is saying is being flooded by all the noise he is creating and our resistance to take him seriously. He isn’t staying silent. He is too loud. That’s a way of making people ignore the obvious if they are not careful enough.
So let me be your Active Noise Cancellation system and let you hear the actual words:
Fact: He wants to create a “super app” modeled after Chinese applications where you can find everything you need online. He told it to a group of potential investors in October 2022.
Nothing like that exists in the US -yet. Meta, Google, and Apple have similar ecosystems but their apps work as standalone solutions and many users would not even know if they did not place their logo on them.
That’s fundamentally different from having something like WeChat where you can talk to your friends, buy stocks, follow news, and watch content.
Question: Do Musk’s actions really work towards this end?
Side Question: Even then, why would he want them to appear random?
To answer these questions, let’s take a closer look at what he has been doing with the Old Twitter.
Verification system: Gone ✅
The moment Musk got in the saddle of the blue bird, his attention turned to a mysterious commodity with high demand and no price tag: blue badges. He immediately started selling them.
This wasn’t a simple move to generate income for a struggling company.
On the contrary, as they were, blue badges would never generate income. Because the moment he started selling them, blue badges lost their appeal.
Everybody knew that a user could not become a trusted writer by paying $8. Any person who sold anything once in their lives would know that people would not want blue badges if everybody had blue badges.
The platform needed them for trust, not for money. People wanted them because they were not for sale.
Those little blue symbols were the Berlin Wall between Twitter’s two functions as a clowning arena and a source of information. This delicate balance proved essential in 2010 when the tweets were at the core of #OccupyWallStreet and Arab Spring.
When a viral tweet could affect the lives of thousands during a riot, it’s important to know whether the source of it is trustworthy or not. Blue badges were a risk management tool for this problem, and handing them out was a serious responsibility undertaken by Twitter management.
In this sense, managing Twitter was always something beyond managing a social platform business.
By selling them for $8, Musk reduced blue badges’ essential value (“trust”) to nothing and stripped the platform from its trustworthy news sources.
He turned blue badges into a functional premium package with longer character limits, tweet editing, HD video uploading, etc.
He could leave blue badges as they are and use a different symbol for this premium package.
Didn’t he really understand blue badges were worthless as they are? Why did he choose to transform blue badges into something else and destroy Twitter’s symbol of trust?
Replacing “trust” with “anxiety”
While many users insist on believing that Musk “did not understand” what he bought and is pushing the platform towards “destruction”, he is taking consistent steps towards his original goal of creating a super app environment such as making partnerships with online finance platforms and hiring an experienced media executive as the new CEO.
Managing financial assets and enjoying high level media are logical priorities if Twitter will become a super app.
Ethically, it’s obvious that a platform should have trustworthy sources of information people are to exchange news and trade stocks. But let’s put aside that part for a moment. Here are some questions:
- If you were planning to make profits from a platform where people gossip about the business world, would you want obstacles against anonymous speculators?
- Do people check Twitter more often when they feel secure, or when they feel threatened?
- In the old days, trustworthy sources with blue badges could easily disprove false claims. Would this be a sign of success for the owner of the platform if he wants an addicted crowd?
Consistent actions towards a super app
It’s no secret that Twitter’s transformation is not coming easy on loyal users. But it’s consistent with its owner’s vision. When we look at what has been accomplished in the past months…
- Higher visibility for paid, unknown users
- A highly speculative environment with fewer checks and balances
- A less reliable platform with unexpected changes
- Longer and article-like tweets by anonymous users
- A shift of balance at the expense of verified well-known writers
- Exposure to content from users that you do not follow
- The dissolving of the Trust and Safety Council
We can see a consistent set of actions.
Let’s not misunderstand the plan: Musk takes companies and organizations seriously. Their importance cannot be emphasized enough for an American super app where stock markets, employment, and jobs are essential.
His perspective on this is reflected in the $1000/Month price tag of the Verified Organizations package. If you are big enough to be in the stock markets, the New Twitter takes you more seriously. If not, you can pay $8 and make yourself a bit more visible in this interesting environment and pray that someone does not open an account with your company’s name.
Elon Musk is building an online arena where all companies in the US, and potentially in the world will be discussed and traded. He has declared this time and again.
Such an arena will be risky for everyone. Except for one.
We might object to it. He probably has a response for that:
