Is Elon Musk's 'everything app', the next in the series of Super Apps?

The internet is on brawl after Elon Musk announced his plan to launch an ‘everything app’ on Tuesday. Revealing his plan, Musk tweeted, “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

What is an ‘everything app’?

Elon Musk ‘everything app’ is a super app that can be understood as a tool for multiple functions. This Swiss army knife for mobile apps owns a suite of services including messaging, social networking, transactions, and e-commerce shopping. 

Mobile phones are the main portal to the internet. And with the advancement of technology, these apps have become popular all over Asia. It is believed that the concept of ‘super apps’ is rooted in China and Southeast Asia. And Chinese apps like WeChat and Grab are the best examples of ‘super apps’.

According to reports, the Chinese super app WeChat has more than 1 billion monthly users. This messaging platform allows users to hail a car or taxi, send money to friends and family or make payments at stores.

Grab, on the same note is a leading super app across the boundaries of South-East Asia. It provides food delivery, ride-hailing, on-demand package delivery, transactions, investment, and more.

Whereas in India, companies like Reliance, Paytm, and PhonePe are working as a super apps for their consumers. Like Reliance, under its brand name Jio is providing various services like shopping, content streaming, groceries, payments, cloud services, etc. Paytm allows users to book tickets, play games, do online shopping, and manage banking, consumer finance, etc. 

On the contrary apps like Flipkart also tied up its payments app PhonePe with other companies to provide various services with their own app. According to reports, Tata is been working to launch its own ‘super app’ very soon.

Why does Elon Musk want to build another Super App?

In a conversation with Twitter officials, Musk said he saw an opportunity to make an app like WeChat. He mentioned that "You basically live on WeChat in China."

His vision involves adding more tools and services to Twitter which could also help the billionaire reach his mammoth goal to expand the app's number of users from 237 million to "at least a billion". Also, some reports say that Musk and his inner circle are working together on an idea to introduce digital payments to Twitter in the coming future.

Also, Meta-owned social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are also working day and night to expand the messaging app into a wider arena.