X marks the spot for Musk’s Twitter rebrand

The re-branding of Twitter could be the start of a transformation into a financial super-app. But is the market ready for Mr Musk and a bold plan for his severely bruised social platform? 

Twitter had achieved that monumental feat in marketing, like Hoover or Xerox, to have its name become a verb. But after rebranding itself as X, the private company has been estimated to have lost as much as US$20 billion in value. 

Whether a “tweet” will disappear from the lexicon after Musk rebranded the social platform he purchased for US$44 billion to X, a move widely heralded as a disaster, remains to be seen. 

But whatever you think of the branding, the future of what was once Twitter is up there with the birds as Musk considers how to turn his immense capital investment into a cash-positive business. 

The move to monetisation

The PayPal founder has been spit-balling how to monetise Twitter since his purchase. Steeply declining advertising revenue has the platform squarely in the cash negative, and while the monetisation process often bedevils tech companies which, like junior explorers, rely on investment dollars to function on a long pathway towards positive cash flow, paid blue checks have failed to get the job done. 

X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino said in a series of tweets, or X’s—that the rebrand was the start of a new direction for the platform. 

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — cantered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” she wrote.  

“Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” 

A payment-based business model is monetisable beyond advertising and could certainly be profitable with a huge built-in global user base. Still, there remains lingering scepticism. 

Not only is there a question of whether there is an incentive for Venmo or CashApp users to sign up to Twitter, but by Musk’s admission, his platform is plagued by bots, spam accounts, and a low level of trust customers required for financial services. 

“We’ve got a million fake accounts,” the Tesla Chief has acknowledged, and it is easily suggestible that a Twitter payment service could quickly become a hub for fraudsters. 

The Super-App

The concept already exists for the most part. WeChat, the Chinese super app which Musk has expressed his admiration for, incorporates many of those features and boasts more than 1.3 billion active monthly users, but comes with a caveat of extensive international data collection and links to the social credit score system. 

We may think of China as an authoritarian state different from our own, but legally protected speech has been proven to have financial ramifications from Western institutions. 

China’s WeChat is the kind of super-app envisioned for X

Brexiteer Nigel Farage recently secured a document indicating that his political views were considered for a bank account closure, and Canadian authorities froze financial accounts for those involved in the Ottawa protests regarding COVID-19 mandates. 

Musk has presented himself as a champion of free speech but was quick to boot journalists off his newly acquired business with a sudden change of policy over accounts covering the details of private jet travel using publicly available information. 

Previously donating relatively equal amounts to both major US political parties in the past decade, Musk has stated his intention to vote for Republican candidates and has become increasingly politicised. 

Musk is a prominent critic of short-selling, and you must wonder what might happen if you indicated you were shorting one of his companies on his owned platform. 

Do people want to make financial transactions on the same platform you provide opinions? 

Meta has a similar problem, with its would-be Twitter replacement Threads linked to users’ Instagram accounts, removing a wall between accounts for would-be anonymous users, taking further away from what little privacy can still be found on the internet. 

And what happens when a super app goes down? The Korean equivalent used by 90 per cent of their population, Kakao, recently went offline over most of the nation, rendering millions unable to make payments, send messages, or access critical services. 

Trying to turn Twitter into WeChat presents a Herculean task in the highly fragmented US and European markets with a greater impetus on privacy, even if Musk has proven himself a dedicated and adroit businessman as the current wealthiest person on earth. 

The rollout of X has already faced a somewhat prophetic hurdle, with a change of signage interrupted by local police, leaving just an E, an R, and a bluebird on one side of its headquarters. 

A sign which could quickly be taken as a bird of ill omen, but not by Musk. 

Musk at least appears bullish

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