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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 17 october 2022
Musk has a ‘super app’ plan for Twitter.

It’s super vague

By BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer
Elon Musk has a penchant
for the letter "X." He calls his
son with the singer Grimes,
whose actual name is a
collection of letters and
symbols, "X." He named the
company he created to
buy Twitter "X Holdings." His
rocket company is, natu-
rally, SpaceX.
Now he also apparently
intends to morph Twitter
into an "everything app" he
calls X. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for
For months, the Tesla and the Axel Springer media award in Berlin on Dec. 1, 2020.
SpaceX CEO has expressed Associated Press
interest in creating his own bandwagon, expanding factory near Austin, Tex-
version of China's WeChat their offerings in an effort to as, that he thinks he's "got
— a "super app" that does become indispensable to a good sense of where
video chats, messaging, people as they go about to point the engineering
streaming and payments their day. None have set team with Twitter to make
— for the rest of the world. the world on fire so far, not it radically better."
At least, that is, once he's least because people al- And he's dropped some
done buying Twitter after ready have a number of strong hints that handling
months of legal infight- apps at their disposal to payments for goods and
ing over the $44 billion handle shopping, commu- services would be a key
purchase agreement he nicating and payments. part of the app. Musk said
signed in April. "Old habits are hard to he has a "grander vision"
There are just a few ob- break, and people in the for what X.com, an online
stacles. First is that a Musk- U.S. are used to using dif- bank he started early in
owned Twitter wouldn't be ferent apps for different his career that eventually
the only global company activities," said Jasmine became part of PayPal,
in pursuit of this goal, and Enberg, principal analyst could have been.
in fact would probably be at Insider Intelligence. En- But it's not clear that We-
playing catch-up with its berg also notes that super Chat's success in China
rivals. Next is the question apps would likely suck up means the same idea
of whether anyone really more personal data at a would translate for a U.S. or
wants a Twitter-based ev- time when trust in social global audience. WeChat
erything app— or any other platforms has deteriorated usage is almost universal in
super app — to begin with. significantly. China, where most people
Start with the competition Musk kicked off the latest never had a computer at
and consumer demand. round of speculation on home and skipped straight
Facebook parent Meta Oct. 4, the day he reversed to going online by mobile
has spent years trying to his attempts to get out of phone.
make its flagship platform the deal and announced Operated by tech giant
a destination for every- that he wanted to acquire Tencent Holding Ltd., the
thing online, adding pay- Twitter after all. "Buying platform has made itself
ments, games, shopping Twitter is an accelerant to a one-stop shop for pay-
and even dating features creating X, the everything ments and other services
to its social network. So far, app," he tweeted without and is starting to compete
it's had little success; nearly further explanation. in entertainment. It is also
all of its revenue still comes But he's provided at least a a platform for health code
from advertising. little more detail in the past. apps the public is required
Google, Snap, TikTok, Uber During Tesla's annual share- to use prevent the spread
and others have also tried holder meeting in August, of the coronavirus.
to jump on the super app Musk told the crowd at a China has 1 billion inter-
net users, and nearly all of
them go online by mobile
phone, according to the
government-sanctioned
China Internet Network
Information Center. Only
33% use desktop comput-
ers at all — and mostly in
addition to mobile phones.
Tencent says WeChat had
1.3 billion users worldwide
as of the end of June.q