Twitter/X owner Elon Musk loves to announce lofty promises — and now he has one related to love itself: that X will soon be a dating app, as well as a replacement for LinkedIn, YouTube, and banks, among other things. In a recently leaked all-hands call, Musk said he wants X to be an “everything app.”
What Musk appears to not know is that Twitter is — or at least, was, before he took over and traffic and revenue crashed — already a fine place to meet people. I should know, because I met my partner on Twitter back in 2021:
And we’re not the only ones; check out Mashable’s culture reporter Tim Marcin on people who found love on Twitter. Musk is also ignoring the crowded dating app market, and the few that edge out above the main players like Tinder and Bumble.
Maybe Musk doesn’t care about these examples because he has nothing to do with them. He seems to only (in my opinion) appreciate ideas that exit his brain like a muffled fart.
What’s more is that the changes Musk has made to Twitter in the past year have made the platform worse. As Mashable’s Chris Taylor wrote in a story about Musk tanking Twitter in the last 12 months, Musk attempted to silence his critics while elevating conspiracy theorists; mass laid off employees, leading to a class-action lawsuit; and made users pay for verification, spurring confusion and even more disinformation.
If anything, dating is now harder to do on Twitter. Musk altered the DM settings so those who don’t pay can’t message you (though you can change it back). Daily sign-ups and active minutes have both dropped, meaning fewer people are making accounts and users are spending less time on the app. And, personally, I’ve seen an influx of spam and bot accounts following and DMing me and replying to others; they’re not exactly great dating candidates.
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Meanwhile, Musk appears to care more about people calling him “cis” than the fact that Twitter’s valuation is nosediving. Turning Twitter — sorry, “X” — into a dating app or “everything app” doesn’t make sense and doesn’t even seem feasible at this current moment.
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this goal of an everything app never comes to pass. Musk has made false promises in the past, and this could be just another one. Over the years, for example, he has claimed that Tesla would soon produce fully autonomous vehicles; that has yet to happen. This year, Musk also claimed that his brain implant device company Neuralink was preparing for human trials after testing on monkeys, and that no monkey died as a result of the trial. This isn’t true. Wired reported that some monkeys did die in Neuralink trials, after experiencing torturous conditions due to the implant.
Twitter was far from perfect before Musk took over, but it was the “digital town square” where folks would meet and chat. It’s only degraded in the past year, and if Musk thinks he can revive it with dating app functions, he’s mistaken. Honestly, just download Tinder.