Elon Musk: Twitter could be ‘an accelerant to creating X, the everything app’

Hours after Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter, he tweeted that Twitter could be “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” Such an app already exists – in China. WeChat is China’s “everything app” with messaging, payments, lending, and its own app store with “mini” apps.

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

Jonathan Guilford for Reuters:

WeChat dominates China, where its “mini” apps underpin a $240 billion marketplace. But such apps haven’t taken off in the United States, where Apple’s iPhone holds over 50% market share…

Musk has a couple of things even WeChat doesn’t have, though. For example: A rapidly growing global fleet of Tesla vehicles that could potentially create a new way into a Musk-app universe…

Then there’s SpaceX, already partnering with wireless carrier T-Mobile US to provide coverage from its Starlink satellite system. Combining this telecom backbone with transportation and in-app communications becomes potentially more powerful still, and is something that’s easier to do as a part of a privately held corporate empire than a red-tape-bound listed company.

MacDailyNews Take: Elon Musk has a lot of work to do with Twitter on its own, much less trying to integrate it into a super app.

As we wrote back in January 2019:

The “super app” is an interesting conundrum for Apple, but one that is unlikely to spread beyond China due to cultural differences, privacy concerns, acceptance of government oversight, antitrust regulation, differences in how the mobile app markets began, ingrained behavior, and more.

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