Twitter: Musk’s tremendous app ambitions not so tremendous

Elon Musk needs Twitter to grow to be much more than a hen brand and a blue examine mark. The self-proclaimed “Chief Twit” needs to rework the social media platform into a super app. He has already taken some steps in that course. Twitter final week filed registration paperwork that might permit it to course of funds.

Musk can get in line. Loads of huge US tech firms, with deeper pockets and larger buyer bases try to do the identical factor — with little success.

His inspiration is Tencent’s WeChat. In China, the app is used for every part from messaging and gaming to meals supply and paying the hire. Furthermore, it has some 1.3bn customers. Twitter has simply 238mn each day ones. However the circumstances that gave rise to WeChat in China are distinctive and unattainable to copy within the US.

WeChat launched in 2011 simply as smartphone gross sales in China had been taking off. Most individuals who had by no means had a pc or web connection at house skipped straight to the online by way of cell phone. Restricted overseas competitors enabled WeChat to thrive. On high of this, WeChat additionally has robust help from Beijing, which sees it as a option to join digitally with (or, relying in your standpoint, maintain tabs on) the nation’s 1.4bn residents.

Within the US, customers have lengthy relied on completely different apps for various features: e.g. WhatsApp for messaging; Venmo for funds; and Spotify for music. Creating an excellent app within the US would require overcoming entrenched client behaviours. Twitter should persuade customers of the advantage of getting all their private information tracked by one app, no small feat when belief in Massive Tech has deteriorated.

Twitter’s small consumer base already should play catch-up to greater rivals. Fb boasts almost 2bn each day customers and PayPal has over 430mn energetic accounts. In the meantime, lower than a fifth of Twitter customers are US-based. Musk said Twitter “will do numerous dumb issues in coming months”. His tremendous app ambitions might be one in every of them.