Elon Musk wants X to be a 'fully fledged' dating app: report
Musk first flirted with the idea of adding dating app functionality to X in the spring
'Elon Musk' author Walter Isaacson discusses the tech mogul's motivation, politics and how he matches up against Steve Jobs.
Billionaire Elon Musk wants to turn X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he acquired a year ago, into a dating site as part of his push to transform it into the "everything app."
X on Thursday held a company-wide meeting to mark the one-year anniversary of the company’s $44 billion acquisition by the Musk-led investor group, at which Musk said that it will become a "fully fledged" dating site in 2024, according to a report by Business Insider, citing individuals who attended the meeting.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has flirted with the idea of adding dating app functionality to the X platform. In May, Musk responded to a user’s pitch for dating functionality on "Twinder," saying it's an "interesting idea, maybe jobs too."
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Billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X, says the platform will add functionality to make the social media site a "fully fledged" dating app in 2024. (NTB/Carina Johansen via REUTERS / Reuters Photos)
Steven Mark Ryan, a content creator on YouTube who posts videos on tech and finance news, said that an opt-in dating app on the platform "might actually save humanity from extinction" by potentially solving declining fertility rates in developing countries and "would be 10x better than conventional dating apps." He posted the pitch in response to Musk raising concerns about "population collapse" due to a study showing declining fertility rates in Nordic countries.
It’s unclear what Musk has in mind for dating app features on X and what the timeline for those might be beyond his statement that it would happen next year.
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Billionaire Elon Musk in May said the idea of dating app functionality on X, formerly Twitter, was an "interesting idea." (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Business Insider’s report indicated Musk didn’t go into detail about the dating app idea during the company meeting. He also reportedly mentioned the platform is looking at adding banking and money transfer services by going through state-level regulatory approval processes.
The value of the social media platform has declined over the past year since Musk’s group of investors bought it for $44 billion and took the company private.
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X employees were offered new stock options viewed by Fortune that valued the company at $19 billion. That’s down slightly from the roughly $20 billion it was worth in March, a figure that was reported by The Wall Street Journal.
FOX Business’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.