“Buying Twitter is an accelerator for building X, the app for everything.” billionaire elon musk He wrote this sentence on Twitter after he changed his mind about buying the platform.

In a letter to the company, Musk agreed to pay the price he offered months ago before attempting to pull out of the deal.

But along with the message on the social network, the owner Tesla and SpaceX He showed his intention to take Twitter to a new level.

BBC Technology Editor Zoe Kleinman says Musk could think of something like this. successful Chinese WeChat app.

WeChat is a kind of “super app” that combines a number of services such as messaging, social networking, payment and food ordering. Something that does not yet exist in the West.

Compared to its competitors, Twitter is about 300 million active users and it has never experienced the exponential growth of TikTok or Instagram.

But it is considered effective and is widely used by politicians, world leaders and businesses to share comments and opinions.

• Musk seeks trial suspension as Twitter tries to shut down acquisition

When Musk first announced his intention to acquire Twitter, he said he wanted to open the platform to more “freedom of speech” with less moderation. Twitter’s hate speech in the world.

But Musk may be looking to transform the platform into something very different, which might drive his existing fans away, but also attract an entirely new crowd, says Kleinman.

How do super apps work and what can you get with X? Tessa Wong, journalist BBC In Singapore, he tells it in the first person.

What is life like in a super app in Asia?

Stuck at home to care for a sick child, a familiar feeling suddenly came: I crave durian, a tropical fruit from Southeast Asia.

But you don’t need to go to a stand or supermarket to buy it, take it home and try to open the prickly shell.

I just took out my phone, opened an app called Grab, and tapped the screen a few times.

Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock on my door. The delivery man hands me a bag: this is my durian, freshly peeled and sealed in a plastic container, ready to eat.

From ordering taxis and food to paying bills and booking vacations, super apps like Grab offer an incredible variety of services.

Elon Musk is considering creating a so-called X, but in many parts of Asia they have become a fundamental part of our daily lives in recent years.

I mostly use the Grab to take home after a night out, or order Thai food when I don’t have the energy to make dinner for my family.

But many people in Singapore also use it to send packages and documents or shop online: a colleague ordered a karaoke machine for their home.

Other extensions allow you to book bus and ferry tickets, hotel rooms, and even schedule someone to come to your home for the covid test.

digital payment business

Payment for these products and services can be made through the application’s own system. An electronic wallet linked to your bank account or credit card can be configured with points obtained from each transaction performed through the application or as an installment payment.

It can also be used for cashless payments by scanning a QR code with the app in a store or with a physical card linked to your account.

But Grab isn’t the only player.

From Indonesia’s GoJek to India’s PayTM, there are tons of super apps that let you do more, like book manicures, order motorcycle fuel, pay traffic tickets and even buy gold.

A course set by China

Super apps have become fashionable in a region of digital natives. In Southeast Asia alone, nearly three-quarters of our population uses the internet, and 88% of this group has a smartphone.

Then there’s China’s WeChat, the original Asian super app said to be the inspiration for Musk’s X.

It is a messaging and social networking platform that has become one of the largest applications in the region in terms of service range and number of users. At last count, it is estimated to have 1.29 billion users in China alone.

WeChat is also one of the largest payment networks in China, and consumers use it to pay for goods and services and send money to each other.

Some studies show that a Chinese user spends a third of their time on WeChat – not counting the time they sleep.

The dangers of “all in one”

Much has been written about how its prevalence in China’s daily life, in a society tightly controlled by the government, has turned WeChat into a tool of surveillance and censorship.

Messages, posts, and even accounts are routinely blocked for content deemed politically sensitive.

There are also concerns about how it could contribute to various controversial “social credit” schemes in China, where citizens’ lives can be constrained by their bank credit scores or social behavior.

In 2020, WeChat introduced its own scoring system where users get extra privileges if they have good credit records on the app.

The WeChat example highlights the main concern with super apps: since everyone does pretty much everything on multiple platforms, these apps collect a lot of data about people and they can exert a certain power over our daily lives.

How this data is handled and the extent to which governments should have access to it will be part of the debate in societies where privacy is particularly rewarded.

Musk’s super-application X, if it ever materializes, may be viewed with suspicion by some as a double-edged Swiss Army Knife.

But for others, the convenience and simplicity of living life in one app outweigh the disadvantages. For those with deep privacy concerns, there is always the option to reduce your usage.

• Musk backed down and agreed to buy Twitter for 44,000 million

And in open markets, proprietary apps will continue to compete for users’ attention, making most data less likely to fall into the hands of just one or two companies; One of the reasons for WeChat’s dominance in China is that some apps like Twitter and WhatsApp are blocked there.

Here in Singapore, I don’t do everything with Grab. I prefer to use certain apps for other things like grocery shopping or clothes shopping, not because I’m skeptical but because they’re better.

So I’m fine with Grab because it doesn’t know everything about me, just a few things like the fact that I love durian home delivery.