Elon Musk wants to make X into a competitor of LinkedIn

In the year since Elon Musk reportedly paid $44 billion for the social media site formerly known as Twitter, it has undergone a number of changes, including an abrupt name change to ‘X.’ In spite of the early worries about Musk’s erratic policies, the site has allegedly witnessed a rise in user engagement over the past year, and large advertisers who abandoned the platform in droves just a few months ago are apparently coming back.

The company recently unveiled a new hiring function dubbed “X Hiring” that gives checked organisations the chance to post openings on their profiles as X appears to be returning to some semblance of normalcy. Now that LinkedIn’s rival is operational, Musk is making his own unique move to take on the Microsoft-owned site. Musk said in a post earlier today that he doesn’t use LinkedIn at all, not even to review the resumes of those applying for jobs at his firms, calling it “cringe” and demeaning. Additionally, he guaranteed that, in contrast to LinkedIn, the hiring tool in X will be “cool.”

The beta version of X Hiring is only available to companies who make $1,000 monthly subscription payments. It is a part of Musk’s plans to transform X into a ‘everything app’ similar to WeChat, a goal he has expressed on multiple occasions. In order to compete with streaming services like YouTube, the company has already introduced new video features. As a result, a challenge to LinkedIn’s status as the leading professional social media site was certainly inevitable.

But in its current form, X’s hiring tool is still relatively basic and far from becoming a serious competitor to LinkedIn. Having said that, Musk appears to have a method to his madness, and many of the weird things he is attempting with X are apparently succeeding despite grave misgivings from industry watchers. Only time will tell if X Hiring gains traction and causes Microsoft problems in the years to come now that it is operational.