X Targets YouTube, LinkedIn as Rivals; Plans Newswire Service

In an all-company meeting on Thursday, executives at X (formerly Twitter), identified YouTube and LinkedIn as potential future competitors, according to sources, reports Bloomberg.

The meeting was the first time owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino have jointly addressed the entire company. The source also revealed that the executives discussed plans to launch a newswire service named XWire, aimed at rivaling Cision’s PR Newswire.

Elon Musk, who took Twitter private in a $44 billion deal a year ago, and Linda Yaccarino, who joined X as CEO in May from NBCUniversal, have different focal points for the platform.

While Yaccarino has been concentrating on building relationships with advertisers, Musk has been busy overhauling the product. He has introduced features like premium subscriptions and a crowd-sourced fact-checking system known as Community Notes.

Despite a turbulent year that saw advertisers leaving the platform, both Musk and Yaccarino touted record amounts of time being spent on X, claiming a user base of 500 million. However, third-party estimates suggest that the number of active users has declined compared to the same period last year.

An internal memo seen by Bloomberg News indicated that the company believes it is “now positioned for growth,” citing a “decade’s worth of innovation in just 12 months.” The memo also touched upon X’s financial ambitions, stating that new financial tools are in the pipeline to offer more opportunities for both individuals and businesses.

Recently, Musk’s other company, SpaceX, stopped airing live rocket launches on its YouTube channel and moved exclusively to X for live videos. This is a hint the company is trying to pivot away from YouTube in some respects.

While the executives provided limited details on how X plans to compete with YouTube, LinkedIn, and PR Newswire, the internal communications suggest that the company is gearing up for significant changes on its way to becoming the “everything app”.