Twitter purchase will be an accelerator for the creation of a super app, says Musk

Elon Musk is taking inspiration from China’s leading social media platform WeChat as he plans a future for Twitter.

And while he shared very few details of his one app ambition for everything, experts say it won’t be easy to achieve.

Tesla’s CEO said on Tuesday that he wanted to create an app called “X” after buying Twitter.

“Buying Twitter is an accelerator for creating X, the everything app,” he tweeted.

Musk’s comment came on the heels of news that he had once again changed course and decided to go ahead with his offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, a price originally agreed in April.

The takeover would put the world’s richest man at the helm of one of the world’s most influential social networks, after months of bitterness and bitter twists and turns.

Now, Musk’s intention to build what is supposed to be an all-in-one platform has drawn comparisons to “super apps” in Asia, essentially one-stop shops that do everything for users.

Several technology companies in the region have already had success with their own versions of these applications.

Chief among them is WeChat, the platform owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent and sometimes described as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and PayPal all rolled into one.

More than a billion users, mostly in mainland China, rely on the social network to do just about everything — from shopping to booking a yoga class and paying bills — without leaving the app.

Elsewhere in Asia, people have also migrated to apps like Grab in Singapore and Malaysia or Line in Japan.

Grab was initially better known as a ride-hailing service provider, while Line gained popularity as a messaging app, and both have significantly branched out to offer other features.

Musk isn’t ashamed of his desire to emulate the success of WeChat. In June, at a town hall with Twitter employees, he compared the American company’s potential to Tencent’s ubiquitous service in China.

“I think an important goal for Twitter would be to try to include as much of the country, the world as possible,” said the billionaire businessman.

“You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s very useful and useful for everyday life, and I think if we can achieve that, or even come close to that on Twitter, it would be a huge success.”

Musk isn’t the only prominent US tech leader taking cues from China: previously, Facebook CEO (FB) Mark Zuckerberg also suggested that WeChat should be a case study for his company.

Rigid competition

For now, Musk has yet to outline his plans for X. But analysts say he will face several challenges.

First: the fiercely competitive landscape. To some extent, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok are trying to “become super apps too,” said Ivan Lam, a Hong Kong-based senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research.

“To try to become a super app, it’s really very difficult,” he said in an interview.

Xiaofeng Wang, a principal analyst at Forrester who focuses on digital marketing and engagement strategies in Asia Pacific, echoed that view, noting that the industry has only become more saturated in recent years.

“When WeChat launched extended services beyond social, there weren’t many established competitors in related businesses yet,” she told CNN Business .

“For example, when WeChat Pay was launched, there was still no well-established mobile payment service in China… While in the US, there are already PayWave, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo.”

Companies trying to expand in the sector may also face considerable resistance from policymakers, according to Wang.

“The more flexible regulatory environment in China at the time gave internet companies like Tencent and Alibaba more room to extend to a wider range of businesses. WeChat took advantage of that and became a super app,” she said.

“It would be a lot harder now given the stricter antitrust regulations in China and it would certainly be harder for Twitter or Future X to do that in the US,” he added.

Perhaps the main challenge, however, is simply trying to be all things to all.

Lam noted that many successful “super apps” typically target specific audiences, making it easy to adapt a set of services to their needs. That would be difficult to replicate globally — and could mean that Twitter or X would also need to focus on certain regions to take off, he said.

Musk acknowledged the uphill battle. On Tuesday, a Twitter user postulated that “it would have been easier to start X from scratch,” prompting the billionaire to respond that Twitter was an important part of the plan.

“Twitter probably accelerates X by 3-5 years, but I could be wrong,” Musk wrote.

Wang said Forrester’s research showed that there were fundamental differences in the way Western and Chinese users viewed social media, making it difficult for Western companies to “build the same level of trust.”

“Ambitions aside, it can be much more difficult to create a super app like WeChat in the West,” she concluded.

— Clare Duffy contributed to this report.