Elon Musk's 'X' App To 'Rule Them All' Gets Twitter Kickstart — But What Form Could It Take?

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said purchasing Twitter Inc TWTR would hasten the birth of “X” an app for everything, but the shape the upcoming platform could take is not yet certain even as the entrepreneur reanimated the junked deal. 

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The ‘X’ Factor: On Tuesday, Musk said on Twitter that buying “Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

The name X is of significance as Musk made his fortune through an initial start-up called X.com, which later morphed into PayPal Holdings Inc PYPL. 

Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

When asked on Tuesday by a Twitter user if it wouldn’t be easier to just start X from scratch, Musk said that purchasing Twitter accelerates X by three to five years. However, the entrepreneur said he “could be wrong.”

Tesla’s Universe: Tesla is largely known for making electric vehicles, but that has not stopped the company from foraying into other product lines and services. At the company’s latest AI Day, Musk and his company showed off a humanoid robot.

The company’s vehicles are already app ready and can be accessed through smartphones. Users can lock and unlock their vehicles, manage climate control and do more with the existing Tesla App.

Musk, a game enthusiast, said in February that the company was working through the “general case” of making Steam games work on a Tesla. Last year, Musk confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 would be playable on Model S and Model X infotainment systems.

More recently, on Tuesday, Musk said he supports bringing Tesla imagery to games. He said, “Would be cool to make a game using Tesla Sim that’s literally your city & neighborhood, down to skid marks on road & then inject fantasy/sci-fi elements.”

Is Musk On To Something? Musk’s plans to create a super app are neither novel nor unprecedented. In Asia, super-apps are already an everyday part of life. Tencent’s WeChat and Naver and SoftBank’s LINE app are popular in the region.

In May, Taiwan-based analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Tencent’s respective 2021 revenues from social networking, advertising, and fintech and business services were $17.6 billion, $13.3 billion and $25.8 billion.

Kuo said Musk’s previously stated target to quadruple Twitter’s revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028 was “achievable.”

In June, Musk said in an interaction with Twitter employees that he wants to make sure that people don’t see “boring” content and cited TikTok, as a model example, reported Gizmodo.

The Shape Of X: Given Musk’s comments since he originally proposed purchasing Twitter and his more recent posts on the platform, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that X could amalgamate Tesla’s core universe and add elements of entertainment, social media and payments to the mix. 

In a recent report, Bloomberg touched on Musk's public musings on making Twitter more useful and more like WeChat and TikTok, it would appear Musk is likely to toy with the idea of letting people use a single app for a wide variety of services from summoning a car to posting social media updates.

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