Elon Musk has given his employees at social media platform X a yr to roll out a payments processing mechanism that may enable people to cast off their bank accounts.
“After I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk told his charges at an all-hands meeting on Thursday.
Audio of the meeting, which was held to mark the one-year anniversary of Musk’s acquisition of the corporate, was obtained by the tech-centric news site The Verge.
“If it involves money, it’ll be on our platform,” Musk said, adding: “I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a checking account.”
Musk appeared virtually on the meeting from his hometown of Austin, Texas — a move that raised eyebrows on condition that he had famously forced employees back into the office upon taking up the firm.
Linda Yaccarino, the previous NBCUniversal executive who Musk tapped to be CEO of X, was also absent from the corporate’s San Francisco headquarters.
She conferenced into the meeting from her office in Recent York, in accordance with Fortune.
Elon Musk with one among his son walks on the pit lane after the 2023 United States Formula One Grand Prix on the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 22.AFP via Getty Images
Upon taking up Twitter, Musk demanded that distant employees report back to the office.
Some employees embraced the boss’ “hard core” vision and slept on the office floor after working grueling hours through the chaotic days and weeks after the acquisition — during which Musk laid off most staffers and instituted sweeping changes to the location’s content moderation policies.
Since purchasing the location formerly often called Twitter last yr for $44 billion, Musk has laid out a vision for X becoming an “every little thing app” just like China’s WeChat, which mixes easy messaging, social media, mobile payments, video conferencing, and other features.
Musk has given his employees at X one yr to show the location right into a payments processing app.AFP via Getty Images
After rebranding Twitter as X, Musk signaled he would turn the platform right into a super-app, offering a variety of services from messaging and social networking to peer-to-peer payments.
To that end, X recently announced it was launching an early version of video and audio calling for some users.
Musk described a post on the platform instructing users on enabling the feature as an “Early version of video & audio calling on X”.
The newest functionality comes amid a series of recent features and changes to the platform’s core experience under Musk, who acquired the social media company nearly a yr ago.
Teasing the feature in August, Musk had said users wouldn’t need a phone number for the features, which shall be available on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and private computers.
Musk acquired the location formerly often called Twitter one yr ago on Oct. 26. He’s seen above at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco shortly after the acquisition.AP
Musk has hit work cut out for him at X, which was already struggling financially when he acquired it in a deal that closed Oct. 27, 2022, and the situation appears more precarious today.
Musk took the corporate private, so its books aren’t any longer public — but in July, the Tesla CEO said the corporate had lost about half of its promoting revenue and continues to face a big debt load.
“We’re still negative money flow,” he posted on the location on July 14, resulting from a a few “50% drop in promoting revenue plus heavy debt load.”
Musk acquired Twitter and later rebranded it as X. He said he desires to turn it into an “every little thing app.”ZUMAPRESS.com
“Need to achieve positive money flow before we’ve got the luxurious of anything,” he said.
In line with research firm Similarweb, global web traffic to Twitter.com was down 14%, year-over-year, and traffic to the ads.twitter.com portal for advertisers was down 16.5%.
Performance on mobile was no higher, down 17.8% year-over-year based on combined monthly lively users for Apple’s iOS and Android.
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