X continues to work on its coming revamp of DMs in the app, with the platform looking to enhance its messaging service to be able to compete with dedicated messaging apps.
Which X owner Elon Musk has repeatedly stated is just one of his grand ambitions for the app, providing more utility within the platform to facilitate more of your everyday interactive needs.
Which is unlikely to truly catch on in the way that Elon hopes, but we’ll get to that in a sec.
First off, as you can see in these screenshots (posted by X researcher @P4mui), X’s coming DM refresh will add a range of new features, including full message encryption, the ability to send files, unlock codes, vanishing mode, and more.
Note, X does offer optional DM encryption already, but only to X Premium subscribers, and only within certain parameters. It’s still working to integrate full DM encryption, which looks to be coming as part of this pending update.
File sending has become a common element of most messaging apps, and could be a valuable addition on X also, while codes and vanishing messages will provide more privacy options.
X is also working on the ability to delete messages in a chat, both for yourself and the recipient.
These are handy additions, which, based on these screenshots, look close to completion, which could see X rolling them out sometime soon.
The reformation of X DMs is part of Elon Musk’s grander “everything app” vision for the app, in which X will eventually be able to facilitate all of your interactive demands in a single platform.
That format has proven successful in China, where users seem to prefer the practicality of being able to message, watch videos, shop, pay bills, etc., all within a single app of choice.
WeChat is the best example of this. The messaging app is now a must-have in China, with people using it as a key connective device, though the local version of TikTok (called “Douyin”) has also seen big success in facilitating shopping and services connection as an expansion of its video feed.
For some reason, however, Western audiences haven’t shown the same interest in integrated mega-apps. Western users generally prefer to visit different apps for different purposes, and they log into each with a related mindset.
Which is why, try as they might, none of the major U.S.-based social apps has succeeded in replicating China’s reliance on WeChat in Western markets.
And they have tried. Meta tried to make Messenger into “Western WeChat” in 2016, but nobody cared, then it tried to make WhatsApp into the essential platform for everything in India. It didn’t work.
Twitter also tried several times to integrate in-stream shopping, and TikTok is gradually seeing some success with its in-stream shopping elements, while Pinterest has become a valuable discovery tool, if not a full shopping platform in itself.
In the other way, Amazon has tried to add various social media elements to become its own “everything app”, but none of these efforts have ever caught on in any significant way.
Which is why every industry analyst has been confused by Musk’s repeated claims that he’s going to convert X into an all-encompassing platform, because the way that he presents it, it’s like nobody’s ever thought to try this before.
But they have, and it’s never worked.
It is possible, of course, that times have changed, and as kids who’ve grown up with social media age into higher spending brackets, they’ll be more open to such, and Elon has demonstrated in the past that there is value in challenging existing assumptions.
But at this stage, there is no precedent to suggest that this plan for X is going to work. And again, we even have modern, in-progress examples like TikTok’s shopping push to show that audience interest remains fairly limited.
As such, the push to make X DMs into a bigger messaging consideration seems flawed. I mean, we also have evidence of this from X itself, with the platform enabling audio and video calls from DMs for all users last year. Even with that capacity, the majority of people are still using WhatsApp and Messenger, with X’s usage numbers remaining relatively flat.
So while it could be interesting to see more messaging functionality on X, I’m yet to be convinced that this will be anything more than an interesting refresh, that people will check out once, maybe use a feature or two every now and then.
But the idea that this will make X a real competitor in the messaging space? Yeah, I doubt it.
