Inside Elon Musk's Twitter rebrand

The rebrand of Twitter, now known as "X," is part of owner Elon Musk's effort to transform Twitter into an "everything app."

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The rebrand of Twitter, now known as "X," is part of owner Elon Musk's effort to transform Twitter into an "everything app."

A new report by New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac dug into how Musk was the latest Silicon Valley mogul to pursue an all-in-one app, which has thrived in Asia, but not much elsewhere.

Ryan Mac joined KXAN Anchor Jennifer Sanders to discuss the rebrand.

JENNIFER: Can you first explain what the idea of an everything app is?

RYAN: So an everything app is kind of been the holy grail among, you know, Silicon Valley tech companies for years. It's the idea to have an app that literally could do everything. It can be your social media site, it can be your chatting function, it can order you a taxi, it can, you know, order groceries. You know, in the US, we have apps that do those things individually, but it's the idea that there's one thing, one place, you would go to to do all those things, and that is something that Elon Musk is now pitching.

JENNIFER: OK. And before we get to him, we know that they're tech companies and tech executives, developers in Asia who have been successful in creating this everything app. Why have they been so successful, but people here in the U.S. who have attempted to do this haven't been as successful?

RYAN: So I mean, the most obvious example of that would be WeChat, which is this, you know, all-inclusive app, it started as a kind of a messaging service but expanded to do everything from payments, to identity verification, to shopping, taxi hailing, all within this one app. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons for this. Cultural differences, regulatory differences. One of the main reasons is, you know, the internet in the US has always been kind of a splintered place, people have been used to going to different sites to do different things. In Asia, you know, people started on their phones accessing the internet, and that became kind of a mobile-first experience. And so, you know, people were used to this kind of app experience.

JENNIFER: Twitter changed to "X" recently, and that's kind of the moniker for Musk's everything app. Do we think this could be a success? What is his vision for this and to really create X and make it into this everything app?

RYAN: I think what needs to be stressed here is that this is very much a vision. It's a, you know, his goal for transforming Twitter into X, you know, this thing hasn't come to fruition yet. But it's his vision down the line. X, as he has stated, he hasn't said very much publicly, but it's going to revolve around payments. You know, this idea that you can pay online through this app. Obviously, we can do various other apps, but he wants to centralize a lot of financial services on X, as well as keep, you know, the same Twitter functionality. So he's kind of merging, you know, your social life online with your financial life.

JENNIFER: How does this benefit the consumer? How does an everything app help us? Who would possibly be using this app?

RYAN: You know, I think that's hard to say, you know, what is the value of this over say, using, you know, your credit card or Venmo? Or, you know, however many apps we have to send payments of money online. It's not entirely clear why this is, you know, going to be a better use case, and I think it's down to Elon Musk and to X to explain that to people.

JENNIFER: Do we know a projected timeline when it comes to this?

RYAN: Unfortunately, no, and with a lot of things, Elon Musk-related, you know, it can take a little longer than even what he says. So I think it largely remains to be seen. There's a lot of question marks around this thing. And I guess we'll just have to wait. You know, the company has started to apply for these money transmitter licenses in different states. It's a very fragmented process you have to go to go state by state. There's a lot of hoops you have to jump through. So it's very slow.