Elon Musk There is a tendency for the letter “X”. He calls his son to the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.” He named the company he founded to buy Twitter.”X HoldingsHis rocket company is, naturally, SpaceX.
Now he clearly intends to turn Twitter into the “everything app” he calls X.
For months, Tesla and SpaceX CEOs have expressed interest in building their own version of China WeChat – A “super app” that offers video chat, messaging, streaming and payments – for the rest of the world. april.
There are only a few obstacles. The first is that Musk-owned Twitter won’t be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and may in fact probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. The next question is whether anyone really wants the Twitter-based Everything app—or another super app—to start.
Start with competition and consumer demand. facebook parent meta It has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a go-to destination for everything online, by adding payments, games, shopping, and even dating features to its social network. So far, it has had little success; Almost all of its revenue still comes from advertising.
Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. So far none has set the world on fire, not least because people already have multiple apps to handle purchases, communications, and payments.
“Old habits are hard to break, and people in the US are used to using different apps for different activities,” said Jasmine AnnbergPrincipal Analyst at Insider Intelligence. annberg It also notes that Super Apps will suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has eroded significantly.
Musk sparked the latest round of speculation on October 4, the day he reversed his efforts to pull out of the deal and announced that he was looking to finally acquire Twitter. “Twitter Buying X is an accelerator for making everything apps,” he tweeted without any explanation.
But he has provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he has a “good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to radically improve it.”
And they have given some strong indications that handling payments for goods and services will be an important part of the app. Musk said he has a “grand vision” for X.Com, an online bank he started early in his career, which eventually became part of PayPal.
“Obviously it can be started from scratch, but I think Twitter will help accelerate it in three to five years,” Musk said in August. “So it’s something that I thought would be quite useful in the long run. I know what to do.”
But it’s not clear whether WeChat’s success in China will mean the same idea will translate to a US or global audience. The use of WeChat is almost universal in China, where most people have never had a computer at home and have given up on going online directly by mobile phone.
Run by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps that the public should use to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
According to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center, there are 1 billion Internet users in China, and almost all of them go online by mobile phones. Only 33% use desktop computers – and most other than mobile phones. Tencent says that WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.
Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to create apps that provide so many services that users can’t easily switch to another app. They are not alone.
WeChat has added video calls and other messaging features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. Meanwhile, WeChat’s payment function is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will only take payment through WeChat or rival. ant Application.
Despite the efforts of tech companies, there is no comparable app in the US.
It’s worth remembering that Musk’s grand visions don’t always work out the way he’d expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and their promised fleet of robotaxis is almost as far from reality as the metaverse.
Twitter’s user base is also much smaller than that of its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have all crossed the 1 billion mark a long time ago, Twitter has around 240 million daily users.
“Musk not only has to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change the way they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do that,” Anenberg said.
Now he clearly intends to turn Twitter into the “everything app” he calls X.
For months, Tesla and SpaceX CEOs have expressed interest in building their own version of China WeChat – A “super app” that offers video chat, messaging, streaming and payments – for the rest of the world. april.
There are only a few obstacles. The first is that Musk-owned Twitter won’t be the only global company in pursuit of this goal, and may in fact probably be playing catch-up with its rivals. The next question is whether anyone really wants the Twitter-based Everything app—or another super app—to start.
Start with competition and consumer demand. facebook parent meta It has spent years trying to make its flagship platform a go-to destination for everything online, by adding payments, games, shopping, and even dating features to its social network. So far, it has had little success; Almost all of its revenue still comes from advertising.
Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber and others have also tried to jump on the super app bandwagon, expanding their offerings in an effort to become indispensable to people as they go about their day. So far none has set the world on fire, not least because people already have multiple apps to handle purchases, communications, and payments.
“Old habits are hard to break, and people in the US are used to using different apps for different activities,” said Jasmine AnnbergPrincipal Analyst at Insider Intelligence. annberg It also notes that Super Apps will suck up more personal data at a time when trust in social platforms has eroded significantly.
Musk sparked the latest round of speculation on October 4, the day he reversed his efforts to pull out of the deal and announced that he was looking to finally acquire Twitter. “Twitter Buying X is an accelerator for making everything apps,” he tweeted without any explanation.
But he has provided at least a little more detail in the past. During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, musk told the crowd at a factory near Austin, Texas, that he thinks he has a “good sense of where to point the engineering team with Twitter to radically improve it.”
And they have given some strong indications that handling payments for goods and services will be an important part of the app. Musk said he has a “grand vision” for X.Com, an online bank he started early in his career, which eventually became part of PayPal.
“Obviously it can be started from scratch, but I think Twitter will help accelerate it in three to five years,” Musk said in August. “So it’s something that I thought would be quite useful in the long run. I know what to do.”
But it’s not clear whether WeChat’s success in China will mean the same idea will translate to a US or global audience. The use of WeChat is almost universal in China, where most people have never had a computer at home and have given up on going online directly by mobile phone.
Run by tech giant Tencent Holding Ltd., the platform has made itself a one-stop shop for payments and other services and is starting to compete in entertainment. It is also a platform for health code apps that the public should use to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
According to the government-sanctioned China Internet Network Information Center, there are 1 billion Internet users in China, and almost all of them go online by mobile phones. Only 33% use desktop computers – and most other than mobile phones. Tencent says that WeChat had 1.3 billion users worldwide as of the end of June.
Tencent and its main Chinese competitor, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aim to create apps that provide so many services that users can’t easily switch to another app. They are not alone.
WeChat has added video calls and other messaging features as well as shopping, entertainment and other features. Government agencies use it to send out health, traffic and other announcements. Meanwhile, WeChat’s payment function is so widely used that coffee shops, museums and some other businesses refuse cash and will only take payment through WeChat or rival. ant Application.
Despite the efforts of tech companies, there is no comparable app in the US.
It’s worth remembering that Musk’s grand visions don’t always work out the way he’d expect. Humans are nowhere near colonizing Mars and their promised fleet of robotaxis is almost as far from reality as the metaverse.
Twitter’s user base is also much smaller than that of its social-platform competitors. While Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have all crossed the 1 billion mark a long time ago, Twitter has around 240 million daily users.
“Musk not only has to overcome the hurdle of convincing consumers to change the way they behave online, but also that Twitter is the place to do that,” Anenberg said.