Musk Wants to Turn Twitter into an ‘Everything App’
He calls it “X,” and it may become the WeChat of the US
If you ask someone from China what WeChat does, they’ll say “everything” — and you’d be wrong to think it’s an overstatement.
I was at a Chinese diner with my friend Irene when I first realized WeChat was an app made to rule them all. For context, Irene’s brother had married a few days prior, and she’d sent him money as a wedding gift. It’s a trick we immigrants do when we can’t show up to special occasions: don’t bother with gifts, just send cash and let them pick whatever they want.
I asked Irene which app she used because I was getting tired of high conversion fees. “Wait, isn’t WeChat a texting app?” I said. “They do money transfers now?”
Oh, they do much more than that.
Irene spent the following twenty minutes flexing the capabilities of the #1 app in her home country. There were blog posts, TikTok-like videos, recipes, flash sales, car rides, hotel offers, concert tickets, charities you could join, and even small games like Tetris and Space Invaders.
WeChat is called a Super-App for a reason.
