Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, July 31 (Beijing)-Elon Musk (Elon Musk) wants to turn X (the former Twitter) into a universal app similar to Wechat, and is implementing this plan step by step. However, the US media pointed out that there are huge differences between the US and Chinese markets, and Musk's grand plan may be doomed to failure.

Musk made no secret of his love of the Wechat model. "for those who have used Wechat, I think Wechat is actually a very good model," Musk said on the May 2022 podcast All-In Podcast. "it's kind of like a combination of Twitter, PayPal and a lot of other things, bringing them together with a great interface."

He also revealed the idea of building such a universal app in the United States. "it's a really great app. We don't have a similar product outside China." Musk said.

But US media pointed out that Musk does not know China, otherwise he should have known that transforming X into a universal app like Wechat is doomed to failure. The US media listed three reasons:

1. Wechat's initial goal is the universal application, X is not in China, there are several business rules. One of them is that in order for things to go smoothly, everything from top to bottom must have the same goal. This leads to Musk's first and most obvious problem: compared with the trajectory of Wechat, X's road to omnipotence has not been paved, and it is not designed to be omnipotent.

Wechat and X have a very different beginning, which is a key part of Wechat's successful program. Wechat itself is a social ecosystem that locks in its users from the start, something Facebook and X will probably never be able to achieve. Besides chatting, Wechat has become a ubiquitous part of Chinese people's daily life. People use WeChat Pay for water and electricity, pay government fines and even arrange medical appointments. They've been doing this for years, and if Musk wants to create a Western version of Wechat by simply adding features such as payments, then he still doesn't understand the main points of Wechat's success.

2. X it's too late, the market already has too many strong competitors. When Tencent launched Wechat about a decade ago, China's digital market was still growing and did not have a dominant platform. At that time, ride-hailing applications such as Didi were just beginning. Facebook hasn't even acquired Instagram or WhatsApp yet.

Americans chat with WhatsApp, but Musk is now in a strong market. To create an industry disruptor like Universal Apps, he essentially needs to beat all the tech giants, including payment giant PayPal, Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon and Netflix. At present, people have not seen or heard enough news about X to determine whether Musk has a chance to win. But Musk may be too late and his chances are slim.

3. The United States is not China, even without taking these factors into account, one thing is certain: there are fundamental differences between Twitter and Wechat. Musk mainly caters to Western users, whose habits are different from those of Wechat users.

Wechat's success is largely due to the lack of real competition, and some Western applications have not entered China, making it easy to fill the gap and integrate the strengths of Western platforms. However, Western users have become accustomed to using separate platforms, such as Facebook for social networks, WhatsApp for chat and PayPal for payment. Moreover, credit cards are very popular in the United States, and electronic payment still has a long way to go.

According to US media, given Mr Musk's huge business in China, before building an American version of Wechat, he should have known more about China and done more homework to learn more about why Wechat is successful in China and how it is successful.

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