Elon Musk has teased something called “X, the application of everything”. It might look a lot like the Chinese super app WeChat.
Elon Musk teased something called “X, everything app” after he bought it Twitter Inc. Based on the billionaire’s previous comments, that service could look a lot like China’s super app WeChat.
Musk didn’t provide many details beyond a one-line tweet. But Tesla Inc. impresario publicly admired Tencent Holdings Applications Ltd. has grown from a messaging service to a mini internet used daily by more than a billion Chinese people.
He mused about making Twitter more useful, showing that he wanted it to be more like WeChat and TikTok, the video-sharing service owned by ByteDance Ltd. has been developed throughout the United States. And he draws parallels with so-called super apps popular in parts of Asia, allowing people to use a single smartphone app for a range of services from communication to summon a car.
Here are five things about WeChat that could serve as a template for Musk: It’s more than just social media. A true super app, hundreds of millions of people use WeChat daily to book rides, make food reservations, order food. That is made possible through a vibrant network of “small programs” or compact apps that connect directly to WeChat’s interface. WeChat is a fintech giant, one of China’s largest payment and online financial networks. Users send money to each other, pay for goods and services, and even borrow money. It is one of the country’s most popular news and entertainment portals. Like in the US, more and more young users get their news through their social media feeds, even more so in China. Businesses also use it. WeChat’s small program economy is worth about $240 billion and growing about 12.5% to 450 million users by 2021. In a nutshell, WeChat works as an all-in-one service – combining usage using apps like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Substack. At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk emphasized that he uses Twitter a lot and that he has ideas for how to make the platform “a whole lot better.” He compared his ambitions for Twitter to his vision for X, a financial services company he co-founded in 1999.
Even so, there’s one thing Musk – an advocate of internet freedom – can hardly take a page out of. WeChat is heavily monitored and censored: armies of AI and human censors help ensure that it is clean of content that the ruling Communist Party deems undesirable. It’s everything from lewd posts to dissent and criticism of the government.
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