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 everything app.” He didn’t present additional particulars.
Musk could also be hinting towards so-called “super apps” that are fashionable in China and different elements of Asia and pioneered by the likes of Chinese know-how big Tencent.
Super 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 features.
Chinese app WeChat, run by Tencent, is the largest tremendous app on the earth, with over a billion customers.
In WeChat, customers can message individuals, do cellular banking, pay for issues on-line or in retailer by scanning a barcode, play video games, submit movies, do on-line buying, hail a automobile and lots of different issues.
When Musk talks about “the everything app,” he could possibly be occupied with WeChat.
The Tesla CEO has beforehand expressed admiration for WeChat calling the app “great” throughout a city corridor with Twitter workers in June. Musk mentioned there isn’t any WeChat equal outdoors of China.
“And I think that there’s a real opportunity to create that,” Musk informed workers. “You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so useful and so helpful to your daily life. And I think if we could achieve that, or even close to that with Twitter, it would be an immense success.”
Musk mentioned that he needs at the very least a billion individuals utilizing Twitter, up from 237.8 million on the finish of the second quarter.
Tencent runs the ever-present Chinese messaging app WeChat. The firm has a brief type video characteristic with within the app and has started to monetize that by means of video adverts within the feed. Tencent mentioned such adverts may turn into a “substantial” income sooner or later.
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One of WeChat’s largest options is WeChat Pay. This is a characteristic the place customers can scan a barcode in a retailer to pay by way of their cellular or they will ship cash to associates by way of the chat operate. WeChat Pay can be used for purchases on-line.
Musk mentioned in the course of the city corridor that he thinks that funds inside Twitter could be an “interesting thing to do.”
However, tremendous apps like WeChat have not actually taken off in a giant means 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.
Source: www.cnbc.com”