At the start of October the billionaire chief executive of Tesla Inc, Elon Musk, reversed course on his earlier decision not to buy Twitter Inc. Musk is now willing to proceed with his original plan to buy the social media company for $44 billion. Musk tweeted: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app." The concept of an everything app, often referred to as a "super app," is massively popular in Asia and tech companies across the world have tried to replicate it.
A super app has been described as the Swiss army knife of mobile apps, offering a suite of services for users such as messaging, social networking, peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce shopping.These mega apps are widely used in Asia because mobile is the main form of access to the internet for many people in the region.
Chinese super app WeChat has more than 1 billion monthly users. Users can hail a car or taxi, send money to friends and family or make payments at stores. In 2018, some Chinese cities began testing WeChat for an electronic identification system that would be tied to users' accounts. Grab, a leading super app across Southeast Asia, offers food delivery, ride-hailing, on-demand package delivery and financial services and investing.
During a question-and-answer session with Twitter employees in June, Musk noted there is no equivalent to a super app like WeChat outside of Asia. Adding more tools and services to Twitter could also help Musk reach his lofty growth goals for the company. Musk wants Twitter to grow from its 237 million users to "at least a billion."
Yes, Snapchat parent Snap Inc previously introduced peer-to-peer payments called Snapcash, but ended the feature in 2018. It also made a push into mobile gaming and recently ended that venture as part of cost-cutting plans. Meta Platform Inc's Facebook and Instagram have also tried to expand beyond social networking and messaging into e-commerce.