“Twitter takeover is an accelerator to create X, the all-purpose app.” It is in these enigmatic terms that Elon Musk commented on his change of attitude on October 4: threatened with lawsuit by the shareholders for having withdrawn from the project to buy Twitter for 44,000 million dollars, the head of Tesla finally gave in. Within another messagehe added that the acquisition will accelerate the creation of X by “3 to 5 years.”
If Elon Musk will probably be asked to clarify his thoughts in the coming days, the above statements allow us to better understand his project. It is not the first time that he has mentioned a platform project called X. In 2017, he had also bought the domain name X.com, which had belonged to him almost 20 years earlier. It was then a financial services platform that later became PayPal. However, he admitted that he did not know what he intended to do with this domain name.
What relationship can there be between the future evolution of Twitter and the predecessor of PayPal? The explanation is probably on the Chinese side. In the country, which has closed its doors to all the American giants, the WeChat app meets precisely this definition of a “multi-purpose app”.
Musk passionate about WeChat
On WeChat, Chinese netizens can communicate, obtain information, but above all exchange money, as PayPal allows, but also… make an appointment to get divorced. Out of a Chinese population of 1.4 billion people, one billion use WeChat. What many Western apps dream of, but also Elon Musk, who has repeatedly mentioned his admiration for WeChat in recent months.
The WeChat issue was also discussed during an exchange between Elon Musk and Twitter employees, following the announcement of his planned takeover.
If Elon Musk’s ambitions to create a useful everyday “super app” seem clear, many unanswered questions remain. In defining Twitter as an “accelerator” to create a Western WeChat, Musk does not specify whether this project would complement or replace the social network.
With paid features, Twitter, whose profitability remains very limited, could benefit from additional revenue streams beyond advertising. But if Elon Musk decides to go after his idea, imposing it will be much more complex than in China: against him, giants like Apple, Google, Facebook and even TikTok will be determined to respond.
Source: BFM TV
