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Musk has in the past floated the idea of turning Twitter into the next “super app,” on par with multi-faceted platforms popular in Asia, such as WeChat or Grab.
Back in 2022, on the All-In podcast, Musk said that the US needs a super app. “It’s either convert Twitter to that or start something new. It does need to happen somehow,” he said.
“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk said. “It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter plus PayPal plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China.”
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The super app, he continued, should serve as a “digital town square” that lets users leave comments and post videos. Once the platform had a high level of trust among the public, Musk said, “Then payments, whether it’s crypto or fiat, can make a lot of sense.”
At a town hall event with Twitter employees a month later, Musk reiterated that idea. In China, users basically live on WeChat, Musk said, “because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success.” He also suggested that Twitter’s user base could grow from just over 200 million to “at least a billion people,” CNN reported.
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In October, Musk said, “Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong.” The next day, he remarked, “Twitter is an accelerant to fulfilling the original X.com vision.”
Creating a US-based “super app” would be no easy task, especially given the number of heavy hitters with similar ambitions. Facebook and Instagram have pushed into e-commerce, for instance, while Amazon has extended into several facets of everyday life beyond book sales, like manufacturing and cloud computing.
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