Elon Musk refers to it as “X,” and it has the potential to become the WeChat of the United States.
If you ask a native Chinese speaker what WeChat is capable of, they would respond with “everything,” and it would be incorrect of you to assume that this is an exaggeration. Oh no, they are capable of much more than that.
The reason why WeChat is referred to be a Super-App.
The core consists of fundamental features such as chatting and making payments online. A friend showed me several third-party applications that offered supplementary services, and the shell functions as a platform that can host these applications.
To turn an app into a super app, the user base of the app first has to be grown to the point where users join it because all of their friends are already using it. Only then can the app be considered a success. The second stage, which is perhaps the most crucial one, is to include payment tools that customers can trust; additional points are awarded if you make them quick and simple to use.
The domino effect begins to take shape at this point.
Your super-app will become more helpful to customers as you add more features, and it will attract a greater number of new users, which will lead to further expansion of your business. WeChat was able to completely dominate China in a span of fewer than seven years because of this strategy.
Because of the exponential nature of super-apps, once an app becomes popular, it is difficult for other applications in the same category to catch up to it. As a consequence, each nation only has a single super-app. In the United Arab Emirates, they have Careem; in Singapore, they have Grab; in India, they have Paytm; and in the United States, we have…well, nothing at this time.
Why?
To summarize, there are a handful of tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple that is now mired in an unbreakable impasse. According to the calculations of industry experts, every corporation aspires to develop a super-app in order to make an additional $5 trillion for itself. You were likely unaware of the competition to create super-apps since it took place behind the scenes, at least up until Elon Musk entered the fray.
The joke’s on me today since he actually packed a lot of information into these 12 lines, which I frequently mock about people building full articles out of a brief tweet from Musk, but the joke’s usually on them.
Musk may utilize Twitter as the basis for X rather than starting from scratch and making use of Twitter’s already existing capabilities as well as its 450 million monthly users. Great for getting things started, but there are still two issues that Musk will need to work through. The rate of growth on Twitter has slowed down significantly, and the presence of a large number of phony accounts is hurting the platform’s image.
This takes us to the policy that Musk declared on the blue bird’s price of $8 a few days after he became the CEO of the company.
People who want the “blue check” next to their names on Twitter will have to pay a price if they want to get verified by Elon Musk, and that cost will be a monthly one. The mission is to improve the authenticity of Twitter and make it more accessible to new audiences. In point of fact, Musk desires Twitter to evolve into a worldwide online town square that provides at least one billion users with access to information that is of high quality and originates from actual people.
It may take more than a “blue check” to achieve the work, but it’s a huge step toward developing greater confidence in the platform, and trust makes it a lot simpler to incorporate payment options.
Keep in mind that the payments system is essential to the development of a super-app, and happily for Musk, he is not unfamiliar with financial technology. After all, he was the one who developed an early version of the PayPal website. He may either try it once again or get in touch with his previous associates.
Musk said at his first meeting with the staff of Twitter that PayPal “had done a tremendous job on the payments front.” “I believe it would make sense to incorporate payments into Twitter in order to make it simple to transmit money to and from one another,”
After that, the next step is to form strategic alliances with other businesses in order to combine services that are complimentary. Musk will have to engage in activities like negotiation, persuasion, acquisition, and hiring, all of which are responsibilities that he has shown an aptitude for during his career as a serial entrepreneur and head of engineering.
Musk also has the ability to create his own arsenal of add-on applications by combining X with Tesla automobiles, Starlink satellites, and Tesla robots. These combinations may give a wide variety of activities, both practical and entertaining. At this stage, the options are unlimited, which makes X seem great; but, the route to completion will not be an easy one, just as it is with any other project that sounds good.
Google, Apple, and the rest of the competitors won’t just stand around and do nothing while Elon Musk takes over the United States and potentially the whole Western world. They are going to strike back, and they are going to strike back hard. Regardless matter who emerges triumphant, they will be responsible for developing the western version of the Everything App.
Elon Musk has shared with his workforce the following advice: “You literally live on WeChat in China because it is so beneficial and so helpful to your everyday life.” “And I believe that if we were able to do that with Twitter, or even come close to achieving it with Twitter, it would be an enormous success.”
