Elon Musk’s Twitter plans might take inspiration from Chinese language tremendous apps

Elon Musk’s revived $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter sparked contemporary debate over what the billionaire will do with the service if he ultimately owns it.

On Tuesday, Musk tweeted that purchasing Twitter is an “accelerant to creating X, the the whole lot app.” He didn’t present additional particulars.

Musk could also be hinting towards so-called “tremendous apps” that are widespread in China and different components of Asia and pioneered by the likes of Chinese language expertise large Tencent.

Tremendous apps is a time period to explain an app that usually acts as a one-stop store for all of your cellular wants. For instance, you would possibly order a taxi or meals by way of the app and on the similar time do funds and messaging. This eliminates the necessity to have a number of apps for various capabilities.

Chinese language app WeChat, run by Tencent, is the largest tremendous app on the earth, with over a billion customers.

In WeChat, customers can message folks, do cellular banking, pay for issues on-line or in retailer by scanning a barcode, play video games, publish movies, do on-line buying, hail a automobile and lots of different issues.

When Musk talks about “the the whole lot app,” he could possibly be enthusiastic about WeChat.

The Tesla CEO has beforehand expressed admiration for WeChat calling the app “nice” throughout a city corridor with Twitter workers in June. Musk mentioned there isn’t a WeChat equal exterior of China.

“And I feel that there is a actual alternative to create that,” Musk informed workers. “You principally reside on WeChat in China as a result of it is so helpful and so useful to your day by day life. And I feel if we might obtain that, and even near that with Twitter, it could be an immense success.”

Musk mentioned that he desires no less than a billion folks utilizing Twitter, up from 237.8 million on the finish of the second quarter.

Considered one of WeChat’s largest options is WeChat Pay. This can be a function the place customers can scan a barcode in a retailer to pay by way of their cellular or they’ll ship cash to pals by way of the chat operate. WeChat Pay will also be used for purchases on-line.

Musk mentioned through the city corridor that he thinks that funds inside Twitter could be an “fascinating factor to do.”

Nevertheless, tremendous apps like WeChat have not actually taken off in a giant method in Europe, the U.S. and different western markets.

WeChat in the meantime is closely censored in China, one thing Musk is unlikely to do with Twitter, given his previous criticisms of the platform’s content material moderation technique which the billionaire feels has stifled free speech.