Twitter CEO Elon Musk Tuesday said the platform will soon add voice and video calling along with encrypted messaging—a long-promised feature—hours after the platform announced new direct message features, a series of moves that appear to be part of Musk’s plan to turn Twitter into a so-called “everything app.”
Twitter’s latest feature update allows users to directly reply to any specific direct message in a conversation instead of the most recent one—a feature similar to inline replies in Apple’s iMessage—and react to a direct message with any emoji.
Commenting on the rollout, Musk said the platform will release “encrypted DMs V1.0…tomorrow,” a feature that Musk and Twitter have been promising for a while now.
The Twitter CEO said the “acid test” for this feature will be him not being able to see any users’ direct messages “even if there was a gun to my head.”
Musk said Twitter will also add voice and video chat features to Twitter, a feature that he did not set a timeline for other than saying it is “coming soon.”
Since taking over Twitter last year, Musk has repeatedly talked about turning the platform into a so-called “everything app” like WeChat in China or Kakao in South Korea.
Musk’s description suggests Twitter will use end-to-end encryption for its direct messages, which would prevent anyone at Twitter or even government agencies from viewing these messages without gaining access to a user’s device. Services like Signal, Apple’s iMessage, Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger currently use end-to-end encryption. It is unclear if Twitter plans to enable this service by default or allow users to opt in. Additionally, it remains to be seen if the encryption will be limited to one-on-one direct messages only or also include group chats.
Tuesday’s announcements are the latest in a series of additions and changes Twitter has implemented recently, as the platform seeks to draw more users. Last month, Twitter Blue subscribers gained access to 10,000-character tweets, special text formatting options and monetization features for content creators. Musk has been vocal about turning Twitter into an attractive platform for content creators and on Tuesday the platform gained its biggest one in former Fox News host Tucker Carlson—who will host his primetime news show on the social platform going forward. Musk has clarified that Carlson did not have a direct deal with Twitter but like other users he will have the ability to monetize his content by setting up a subscription paywall. One of Musk’s big promised features for content creators that is yet to materialize is Twitter sharing its ad revenue with them. The Twitter CEO said the company was still working on software needed for this feature. (Forbes)