Now that the subject has been talked to exhaustion (and probably not over yet), I thought I should come in with my own perspective on the situation...
First of all, let's establish where we start from. I am not a follower or a fan of Elon Musk. I am not his hater either. I dislike him at a personal level, as far as I know about him without being too interested, but I have to recognize his ability to be a trend setter, his desire to be involved in poorly explored domains, his work ethic and his capacity to endure opposition and inspire others with his vision in order to move quicker toward it despite all obstacles.
Quite a bunch of qualities for someone unlikable who wants to be liked.
From his businesses, I probably like SpaceX the most because I'm a dreamer and a space geek and I dislike Neuralink the most because it will turn us all into cyborgs (otherwise we lose the competitive edge compared to peers).
Regarding Tesla, I have no attachment. I neither like it nor dislike it. It will be massive though.
X and the Everything App
It's the first time I've "seen" Elon Musk in action. I can almost give you in writing that he will build this Everything App. And that comes from a non-fan.
And it will take less time than most people anticipate.
As I said, I don't follow him. But from what I read from others who do, he seems to announce the following actions on Twitter. Sometimes he gets carried away from what I hear, but I don't think it's the case with this Everything App path X has taken.
First of all, Twitter has changed a lot since he took over in October last year. From all points of view:
- structure of employees
- top management
- loosened censorship
- paid blue check
- limitation on how many tweets you can read as a free user
- sharing advertising revenue with select users, under strict conditions
- rebranding
At least that's what I remember from what was going on lately. The company behind Twitter also started applying and receiving the money transmitter license in different states. That's the precondition to be able to bring social media and finance together and part of the "everything app".
So, what are my conclusions after we have seen so far?
- Elon Musk is moving fast, and most people have trouble keeping up
- He likes to be front and center of his businesses, especially in the ones where he wants to push progress into hyperspeed
- He likes to share things that can be used (hmm, should I follow him? nah! that means I have to spend time on X); he also likes to joke around, a point against following him if one wants serious information
- His companies (X included) are the opposite of decentralization
- Having the Tesla example right in front of them, traditional social media and probably next, TradFi (or at least Paypal) are right to not take any chances with Elon Musk; therefore the Instagram Threads, which is a Twitter clone; I believe they'll have a hard time keeping up, even though they started earlier than ICE makers started to build EVs
- X and Hive: we have some features that will never exist or won't be guaranteed on X - account ownership, decentralization, censorship resistance; probably everything else, they can build. If they'll add cryptocurrency to X, that will be a major boost to the space. But will they? Musk seems to have fluctuating impressions about the crypto space.