Forget Threads, it's LinkedIn and YouTube that Elon Musk wants to do battle with

• Elon Musk seems to be over the threat from Threads. LinkedIn and YouTube are in his sights instead.
• The X owner singled out those platforms as "future competitors" this week, a Bloomberg report said.

Remember Threads? Elon Musk apparently doesn't. He's got his sights set on LinkedIn and YouTube instead.

Musk, who owns X, joined CEO Linda Yaccarino in singling out LinkedIn and YouTube as "future competitors" in a company-wide meeting on Thursday, Bloomberg reported. It came as the pair celebrated the first anniversary of Musk's takeover of the platform.

Though Musk spent several months warring with Mark Zuckerberg over the launch of copycat app Threads — a saga that threatened to turn into a fist fight — it seems his focus is elsewhere now.

That's not just because Threads is battling a decline in users.

Since his $44 billion takeover, Musk has frequently talked about turning it into an "everything app."

In practice, it would mean transforming X into a place that allows users to do more than just post and follow others. Options for entertainment and education could be on the cards, so too could payments and job opportunities.

Some of this is likely about finding a way to turn a profit.

X's ad revenue has plummeted since Musk's takeover, as advertisers have pulled back spending over concerns around the type of content permitted on the platform.

As my colleague Lara O'Reilly reported this week, marketing consultancy Ebiquity, which works with 70 of the 100 top-spending advertisers, had just two of its clients buy ads on X in September.

But some of this is also about emulating the successes of two of the most highly engaged services online.

LinkedIn has done a lot to move past its reputation of being a place for stuffy, white-collar workers looking for a place to post dull platitudes — despite becoming a little odd in the process.

Influencers and other content creators have flocked to the site to build their brands and networks. It's helping LinkedIn in turn: its revenue increased 8% in the three months to the end of September.

The growing interest in professional networking and ladder-climbing online might explain why Yaccarino made a point to highlight job listings on X in a blog post on Thursday.

Video seems to be just about everywhere online too, making Musk and Yaccarino's focus on YouTube an understandable one.

In an earnings call this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai drew attention to the growth of the TikTok-like "YouTube Shorts," which "now average over 70 billion daily views."

Though X's userbase is a fraction of YouTube's, the potential of both short and longform video is on the radar of X's leaders.

When it comes to Threads though, Zuckerberg isn't sleeping on the job and wants to pour enough "gasoline" on it to ensure its growth. It's not clear whether that approach will succeed, but Musk would surely be unwise to dismiss Threads entirely.