X’s journey to becoming an “everything app”: challenges and progress

In today’s fast-changing digital world, X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is going through a big transformation. Its goal is to become the ultimate “everything app,” which means it wants to do lots of different things for its users. 

Recently, X gathered its first meeting with its new Client Council, led by CEO Linda Yaccarino. The purpose was to show its advertising partners what’s coming next. 

“Today we welcomed an incredible group of leaders for X’s first Client Council — standing room only and the energy was real. We showcased our evolution to the everything app — product roadmaps, content partnerships and our critical work on safety.” Yaccarino shared. 

During the meeting, X highlighted various parts of its changing platform. These included new features like long blog posts, the ability to listen to Spaces while using the app, making video calls, sending money to other users (although they didn’t show how this works), letting creators have paid subscriptions, showing products you can buy within the app, improving how videos look, sharing money with creators, and even listing job openings in the “X Hiring” section. Most of these features were already around in some form before. However, some exciting ideas, like letting you pay for things while you’re using the app and shopping without leaving X, are still being worked on.

For instance, the in-app payments feature isn’t finished yet. Right now, it shows emojis of bags of money instead of actual payment notifications. That’s because X is still working on getting the right permissions to make this happen. Similarly, the in-app shopping feature is a work in progress. In the past, it used to take you to other websites to buy things. But eventually, X wants you to be able to buy stuff right inside the app.

X has gone through a lot of changes recently. After Elon Musk bought the company, X cut down its staff by more than 80%. With fewer people working on X, making brand-new stuff is tough. So, it’s impressive that X has managed to add any new features at all, given these challenges.

Even though X has faced these difficulties, it’s making progress and has a vision for what comes next. But it’s going to take some time to make it all happen. That’s because they need permission for payments, they need to connect things on the back end, and they need to make the app look and work better. X is still figuring out how to use its staff most effectively. 

Overall, X’s journey to becoming the ultimate “everything app” is a big task that’s still in progress. The platform is moving forward step by step, but it still needs support from ads and partnerships with brands to make its exciting plans a reality. For instance, X recently announced its partnership with Integral Ad Science (IAS) to provide pre-bid brand safety. 

Additionally, X introduced a new feature that enables its subscribers to share their email contact information with the creators they follow.