Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking cues from the Chinese social media platform WeChat while planning the future for his acquisition of Twitter. Elon Musk, who has been embroiled in a Twitter takeover dispute, has relaunched his bid for the Internet giant, still at a price of $44 billion. He also said he hopes to develop a super app called “X” after the acquisition of Twitter.
Elon Musk wrote in Twitter, “Buying Twitter is a gas pedal to create ‘X’, a super app (everything app).”
The “X” will essentially be a “one-stop store” like WeChat, where users can perform almost all of their daily consumption functions. The same idea was previously expressed by Facebook’s founder Zuckerberg.
Elon Musk is a global leader in technological innovation, but he seems to be unapologetic about following WeChat’s lead when it comes to Internet applications. He compared Twitter and WeChat at a Twitter employee forum in June, saying that one of Twitter’s key goals was to reach as many regions and people as possible and let people “basically live on it.
Just like WeChat in China, which has enabled nearly 1 billion Chinese to “live on it” because of the convenience, it provides to their daily lives, WeChat’s success is unlike any other in the world, and it would be a huge success if Twitter could do that or come close to it.
In fact, super apps like WeChat are not limited to China, as similar apps have been created in other parts of Asia, such as Line in Japan and Grab in Singapore and Malaysia, which started as a taxi service and has since expanded into consumer finance, while Line started as a chat tool and has since expanded into other lifestyle services.
Elon Musk’s goal is to have 1 billion people using Twitter in the future with the X super app, but he has not yet revealed details of his plans for the “X” super app. As of the second quarter of this year, Twitter had 238 million users.
However, Elon Musk’s desire to build a super app in the U.S. is not easy to achieve because of the differences between the U.S. and Asian market environments.
The biggest challenge is the fierce competitive landscape in the US. When WeChat first expanded its services beyond social functions, there were not that many established apps in China, which allowed WeChat to take over the market quickly, but now in the U.S. market, Twitter is not dominant, and the market is becoming saturated with TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook and others trying to become super apps that take up more of people’s time in their daily lives.
In addition, one of WeChat’s most powerful features right now is payments, thanks to the fact that when WeChat Pay was first launched, there were no mature mobile payment services in China. But in the U.S., there are now Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo and others, so Twitter has challenges to re-establish its payment capabilities.
More importantly, the global regulation of Internet technology companies tends to be tougher. A dozen years ago, lenient and flexible policy regulation boosted the rise of a number of Internet companies, but now with the introduction of anti-monopoly laws and tougher privacy protection and other bills, it is more difficult for Internet companies to obtain users’ privacy authorization, and once they violate the relevant laws and regulations, they face stronger penalties.
On the other hand, due to cultural differences, Asian users and American users have fundamentally different views and acceptance of social media, making it difficult for U.S. Internet companies to establish the same level of user trust.
Elon Musk also recognizes that this will be an uphill battle. He predicts that it could take 3-5 years for Twitter to incubate “X” into shape.
But this expectation may still be too optimistic.
