It's difficult to gauge where X stands today, concerning its long-term vision, and if it is possible for the platform to become the "everything app" its new team seems to envision.

That, in part, is because X keeps issuing radically optimistic projections, and unprecedented usage stats and figures, which makes it hard to know if its new initiatives are working-and driving new opportunities-or if the larger decrease in X ad spend represents the state of its market. Couple that with limited staff capacity, and not exactly positive reports about its updated approach on content moderation, and it would seem X is in trouble, but maybe it isn't, and maybe it will be able to ride this initial storm as it looks to re-imagine the app in this new persona. This week, X held its first Client Council meeting since reforming it, where the new management team of X, led by CEO Linda Yaccarino, gave a full picture of its developments and where it is hoping to reach in the near term.

Addendum: The video in this post was replaced after users noted that it included some sample tweets that were scathing of Elon Musk.

It’s a fairly typical, upbeat presentation for ad partners, though most of the new features are not game-changers, as such.

In summary, the above video presentation highlights:

Long-form blog posts on X

Listening to Spaces in the docked player, while engaging in the app
Video calls
Money transfers between users (though there’s no specific example of this)
Creator subscriptions
Product listings in-app
Multi-format video playback
Creator ad revenue share
Job listings (X Hiring)
All of these have already been released in some form, though in-stream payments and shopping, two of the key elements of Elon Musk's "everything app" push, both seem unfinished as yet.
What appears to be X's in-stream payments example is apparently not complete, with a message displaying cash bag emojis instead of an actual transfer notification.

X is still working on acquiring payment licenses that should enable this feature, so there seems to be some way to go yet. But I would imagine that eventually, this would ideally reflect more or less as it is presented as payment transfers in Messenger, with a notification of the payment specifics.
Older versions also included product listings on some user profiles but as of now, this does not enable in-stream buying and just pushes users onto the actual product listing on another site to be sold.
That, I also assume, will eventually become a self-contained process, with the actual transaction itself being facilitated within the X app, keeping users engaged, while also providing more opportunity to cater to a broader range of use cases.
But they're not there yet, so as observed, this presentation is more window dressing, more putting a new sheen on older products and examples, with not really much innovation or advances of major significance as yet.

Which makes sense.

Again, X laid off more than 80 percent of its workforce after Musk acquired it, and it has also been trying to reduce costs in every possible way, including switching off data centers and deleting extraneous code to smooth out the app as well as its management. That in itself calls for a fair amount of effort, getting the time and resources to push out any new elements, and in that respect, it's impressive that X has been able to push out any new features at all, let alone the platform-changing additions that Musk has in mind. They may well be coming, but as we’ve noted previously, the vast majority of the updates that X has rolled out over the past nine months, since Musk took over the app, were actually old projects that were already close to launch, which Musk and Co. pushed out. That’s given the impression of rapid innovation, despite these predominantly being older initiatives.

The challenge for X now is how it gets these next big elements moving, given that there are no more shelved projects in waiting, and it has far fewer staff to lean on for its updates.

Clearly it is moving, and it does have a vision in mind for the next stage, based on these examples. But it'll take time to develop, due to payment approvals, backend integrations, new UI updates, etc.

X is still working out how to best rationalize its staff in this respect.

Reports this week suggest that X is outsourcing some of its ad sales to Google, as a means to both bring in more revenue and reduce the workload on its own staff. Another aspect, this also proposes that X is looking to have some third party for its new ID verification process, and maybe, that's the direction where X is heading, in partnering outside vendors to facilitate a lot of functions and processes, where it is going to use them to develop new partnerships moving forward. That might free up X's own teams to focus on building the next stage. Though again, it has already added job listings, expanded video, and creator revenue share, while it's also working on new live-streaming offerings too.

X is getting stuff done, but at present, much of what Yaccarino and Co. are selling is not new, just a dressed-up version of what Twitter had always been.

X, as it stands, is far from its final form-which Elon himself would most likely admit. Yet, on its way to achieving that next level, it still requires an investment, and it must get brand partners excited about its new additions, even if they are yet to be here. So X seems to pitch brands more on the promise of what's to come, not quite what's here yet.

Which makes it hard to evaluate. Will X succeed in its "everything app" ambitions? Perhaps, if it can wrangle all of these pieces into line, and push more users onto the platform, then perhaps, with payments and shopping in-stream, along with subscriptions, video calls, and much more, perhaps it will all coalesce into this new super-platform that Elon envisions.

But maybe not. It's an almost impossible goal on balance, and one many other social apps have failed at.

Does that mean that Elon will fail too? Most would hesitate to bet against him, given the success that he has been able to achieve in other "impossible" sectors and projects.

But it's a way off, and while X logically wants to project an optimistic vision, even that vision, in itself, is incomplete as yet.