{"id":631291,"date":"2022-10-05T07:04:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T05:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=631291"},"modified":"2022-10-05T07:04:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T05:04:46","slug":"musks-everything-app-x-sounds-a-lot-like-chinas-wechat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/631291\/musks-everything-app-x-sounds-a-lot-like-chinas-wechat\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk\u2019s everything app \u2018X\u2019 sounds a lot like China\u2019s WeChat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk has teased something called \u201cX, the everything app\u201d after he buys Twitter Inc. Based on the billionaire\u2019s past comments, that service could look a lot like Chinese super-app WeChat.<\/p>\n<p>Musk didn\u2019t provide many details beyond a one-line tweet. But the Tesla Inc impresario has openly admired the Tencent Holdings Ltd app that\u2019s grown from a messaging service to a mini-internet used daily by more than a billion Chinese.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s mused aloud about making Twitter more useful, indicating he wants it to be more like WeChat and TikTok, the video-sharing service owned by ByteDance Ltd that\u2019s taken off across the US. And he\u2019s drawn parallels to so-called super apps common in parts of Asia, letting people use a single smartphone application for a range of services from communications to summoning a car.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/elonmusk\/status\/1577428272056389633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 4, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019re five things about WeChat that could serve as a template for Musk:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s much more than social media. A true super-app, hundreds of millions use WeChat daily to book rides, make dining reservations, order food. That\u2019s possible through a vibrant network of \u201cmini programs\u201d or lite apps that connect directly to WeChat\u2019s interface.<\/li>\n<li>WeChat is a fintech titan, one of China\u2019s biggest payments and online finance networks. Users send each other money, pay for goods and services, and even borrow money.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s one of the country\u2019s most popular news and entertainment portals. As in the US, many younger users increasingly get much of their news through their social media feeds, just even more so in China.<\/li>\n<li>Businesses use it too. The WeChat mini-programs economy is worth roughly $240 billion and grew about 12.5% to 450 million users in 2021.<\/li>\n<li>In short, WeChat functions as an all-in-one service &#8211; combining the uses of apps like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Instagram and Substack.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At Tesla\u2019s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk stressed that he uses Twitter a lot and that he has ideas on ways to make the platform \u201cradically better.\u201d He compared his ambitions for Twitter with the vision he had for X, a financial services company he co-founded in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s one thing though that Musk &#8211; an advocate for internet freedoms &#8211; is unlikely to take a page from. WeChat is heavily monitored and censored: armies of AI and human moderators help ensure it\u2019s clean of content the ruling Communist Party deems undesirable. That\u2019s everything from lewd posts to dissent and criticism of the government.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/631085\/youll-soon-be-able-to-block-screenshots-on-whatsapp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">You\u2019ll soon be able to block screenshots on WhatsApp<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk has teased something called \u201cX, the everything app\u201d after he buys Twitter Inc. Based on the billionaire\u2019s past comments, that service could look a lot like Chinese super-app WeChat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":581498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[15696,45,26,1977,6118,14646,93,6188],"class_list":["post-631291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-bytedance","tag-facebook","tag-headline","tag-tencent","tag-tesla","tag-tiktok","tag-twitter","tag-wechat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631293,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631291\/revisions\/631293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}