Elon Musk may soon face competition from companies like Apple, eBay, Amazon, Uber, PayPal, Spotify, Venmo, Electronic Arts, Meta, and Nintendo, to name just a few.
The “X” branding that Twitter adopted goes beyond a name change. The change, which was once just a little microblogging app, has been hailed by Musk as the biggest one yet in the development of a “everything app.” Since the time he first bought the business, he has revealed tidbits of his plans for this app, citing the Chinese social media platform WeChat as a possible model.
“You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, while I think if we can achieve it, or even get close to what we have at Twitter, it would be an immense success,” Musk stated in June 2022 following his first meeting with Twitter staff.
On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino reaffirmed this objective.
Yaccarino, who previously oversaw ad sales at NBCUniversal, stated in a post on X that “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity” that is focused on audio, video, messaging, and payments/banking and creates a global market for opportunities, goods, and services. The organization that owns NBC News is called NBCUniversal.
The process of creating an all-encompassing app is fraught with difficulties, from ferocious competition from underdogs and well-funded rivals to regulatory obstacles and user preferences.
Taking aim at giants
Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, will have to overcome a number of well-established rivals in order to become the hub of digital activity.
What will Twitter provide us that we won’t already receive from all of these other apps that we have, which already have millions of users and a respectable level of engagement? remarked Anjana Susarla, a Michigan State University professor of ethical artificial intelligence.
Asia is a major market for “everything apps,” as Musk likes to refer to them. WeChat is an app that combines social media, payment options, and instant messaging in China. In Asian markets, other mega applications like Grab in Singapore and Gojek in Indonesia have also found success. Super applications are commonplace in Asia, but according to CB Insights, a company that tracks technological trends, the concept has not yet taken hold in the U.S. and European markets.
Making Twitter a financial powerhouse would likely be the toughest difficulty, as Musk has frequently said.
According to Davidson Oturu, a management consultant for financial technology startups, Apple X would fall short of the company’s more well-known financing options like Apple Pay and Apple Pay Later.
It will be difficult to convince customers to quit Apple and the ecosystem it has built and switch to Twitter to conduct banking and financial activities, he said. “Fintechs have a difficult time convincing long-term banking users to switch to their systems. Making people switch brands will thus be extremely challenging.
According to a Deloitte analysis on Western super apps, Musk’s everything app would also be subject to stricter data privacy laws in the United States and Europe. According to Oturu, China’s method for enforcing data privacy laws is “extremely opaque. That cannot be compared to the United States or other Western nations.
Consumers might be leery of such an app, he continued.
“I’m going to be sharing a lot of stuff on that platform if I’m going to use X and I want it to be my all-purpose app where I bank, shop, communicate, and buy goods and services. I’m not sure how at ease people will be putting all of that data into an all-encompassing app, Oturu continued.
Musk’s efforts to create an all-encompassing app come as the business is still having trouble. He said earlier this month that Twitter’s primary source of income, advertising, had decreased by over 50%.
Musk’s experience with PayPal, which was created following the merging of Musk’s online bank X.com and software company Confinity, was cited by Oturu as “an arguable point” that he could incorporate payment functionality into the microblogging platform.
Susarla claimed that X’s only chance of becoming a super app lay in its current user base.
She stated that a large number of individuals already use Twitter or X. “And I believe they will keep using it,”