Twitter app X has recently launched a beta of its recruitment platform, X Hiring. The service is currently exclusive to companies that display a $1,000-a-month gold-tick verification. The feature allows companies to display a “We’re Hiring” section on their profile pages.
The move is seen as an early step in the direction of Elon Musk’s dream of turning his social network into an “everything app.” Back in May 2023, he acquired recruitment startup Laskie.
When X starts expanding the recruitment service in depth and breadth, the app will surely begin attracting recruitment ads and job seekers. However, Musk needs to make sound choices such as relinquishing the idea of getting rid of the block button that users click on to stop harassment. This applies to other ideas that have alienated former Twitter aficionados, including making them pay for blue checkmarks and now letting X Blue subscribers hide the blue check mark on their accounts.
And it’s a steep curve if X is to reach the status of Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, a top recruitment site, despite less than authentic language used there.
Read: Elon Musk gives up his position as CEO of Twitter
Even before he officially took over the company, Musk was talking about turning Twitter into “something like WeChat.”
“For those that have used WeChat, I think that WeChat’s actually a good model,” Musk said in 2022. “If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat. It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter plus PayPal plus a whole bunch of other things all rolled into one with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app. We don’t have anything like that outside of China.”
China’s WeChat is more than a messaging app in China. It is a way for some 1.4 billion residents to travel, eat, pay household bills, and a lot more. That’s exactly what Musk wants for the rest of the world. WeChat enjoys 800 million monthly active WeChat Pay users. It’s where 50 percent of users spend at least 90 minutes per day, and the average user reads up to 7 articles per day. One-third of users open WeChat up to 30 times if not more per day and one-third of the total time on mobile devices is spent on WeChat.
Many product moves under Musk’s ownership have been steps in that direction. But it’s still a mountain to climb for X.
The Everything App
Musk’s dream of an everything app started when he launched the online bank X.com in 1999. However, at the time, the vision was limited to a “one-stop everything-store for all financial needs.”
That company became PayPal, not a bad achievement and a vehicle for many global financial requirements.
The new X.com was brought back to life in 2023, and this time to extinguish the name Twitter and launch a grander mission.
“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk wrote on the social network. And thus the bird was gone, as it had nothing to do with finances or the grand scheme of things.
Newly hired CEO Linda Yaccarino described the new vision. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered 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.”
Musk is still fixated on the goal of transforming the social network into X, “the everything app,” i.e., not just finances.
X doesn’t just want to handle payments for users but also pay users for their content.
Musk is making amends with the Blue verification checkmark notifying paid subscribers last July that they would be getting a portion of X’s ad revenue.
Musk also said his company would soon share revenue for ads on profile pages, as well, which he claims will “approximately” double payouts.
X app Blue checkmark subscriptions
Beyond that, subscribers of the checkmark enjoy editing posts, fewer ads, higher rankings in conversations and searches, and longer messages and videos.
Additional exclusive features of the Blue Subscription (handle is @XBlue) include unlimited direct messages and the ability to read a lot more Xs per day than unverified users.
Blue subscribers can use characters limits now reaching 25,000 whereas nonsubscribers are still limited to 280 characters,
Blue subscribers can upload 2-hour long videos, up from one hour last December, and 10 minutes prior to that. This potentially makes X a genuine competitor to YouTube.
Musk’s gamble is that users will want a super app to handle everything to do on the internet.
Regulators may have something to say about this as they try to prevent any one app from owning too much of or monopolizing our experience on the internet.
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