The latest news indicates that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, not only stated in a conversation with Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, that he plans to build X into a “WeChat++” (an upgraded version of WeChat) outside of China, integrating information dissemination and financial payment functions. He also openly stated” on the podcast People by WTF that the core goal of the overseas social platform X is to transform into a “super app” that combines multiple functions.

Looking at domestic users in China, they can use WeChat to exchange and publish information, as well as transfer money, which is very practical. However, there is no true equivalent of WeChat outside of China. So, Musk’s next move is to revamp X into an upgraded version of WeChat.

It’s still necessary to briefly introduce this X platform. It is the former Twitter. From 2006 to 2022, it was undoubtedly a globally well-known public opinion arena, mainly focusing on news dissemination and public topic discussions, among other things.

Over the years of its development, problems have become increasingly prominent. For example, for the platform operator, its profit model is single, and its growth has stagnated.

In 2022, Musk acquired it for $44 billion. This year, he publicly announced that xAI, an AI start-up under Musk, acquired the X platform at a price of 33 billion.After the all−stock merger deal, xAI′s valuation soared directly to 80 billion.

This move of “shuffling assets between his own pockets” has also been much talked about both within and outside the industry. In recent years, in terms of platform function iteration, Musk has made numerous attempts, such as strengthening cooperation with creators to launch long-form videos and extended editing features; obtaining payment licenses to pave the way for payment functions; integrating AI models to introduce intelligent assistants and content generation functions; and testing local community features, etc.

Indeed, he has seen tangible monetization potential through WeChat. However, whether he can pull it off still requires time to be put into practice and tested.

For reference, according to public data, the X platform has over 500 million monthly active users globally, which is a substantial user base with great potential. Faced with Musk’s blatant ambition, many netizens commented:

“Tech giants are envious of the model of enclosing users to make money, but that doesn’t mean overseas users are envious of this model.” “He only cares about making money. Whether it’s user-friendly or not has nothing to do with him.”

“Every app here can offer loans and push ads. Does he know that?” “Musk bought X just to achieve the ultimate goal of mobile payment.”

“Which one would you choose, a chatting app that can make payments or a payment app that can chat?” “In China, chatting apps allow you to watch videos, video-watching apps enable online shopping, shopping apps let you order food delivery, and food delivery apps offer loans. Envious, aren’t you?”

Do you think Musk will succeed?

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