The idea is not preposterous. Several so-called “super apps” have long existed in Asia. More than a billion Chinese citizens use QR codes through Tencent Holdings WeChat to do all manner of tasks,from buying groceries to booking a dentist appointment,sharing photos with friends or playing video games. They can access a government-issued ID card through WeChat too.
“You basically live on WeChat in China,” Musk told Twitter’s staff in June. “If we can recreate that with Twitter,we’ll be a great success.”
You can see why Musk is eager to copy the model. If he truly wants to quintuple Twitter’s revenues to $US26.4 billion ($41 billion),one way would be to make it part of a platform that hosts lots of payment activity he can skim from. WeChat made an estimated $US17.5 billion in revenue in 2021,largely through advertising and by taking a cut on transactions it processes for things like games,deliveries and a thriving market for digital services. More than half a billion people use thousands of mini-apps inside of WeChat everyday.
Loading
Singapore-based Grab,which counts SoftBank and Uber as its two biggest shareholders,has also been called a super app,offering ride-hailing,food delivery and digital payments.
But making a super app is hard. For one thing,Americans make mobile payments far less than their Chinese counterparts. And WeChat’s success as a daily hub came down to launching at the right time,in 2011,when smartphone sales in China were exploding,and then riding the wave of its expanding network effect.
Manufacturing a new user base as large as WhatsApp,Facebook or WeChat is all but impossible now. It would be like trying to replicate the explosion of New York’s growth into a megacity during the 19th century. The boom time has passed;the networks are entrenched.