Musk's Next Plans Apparently Include an 'Everything App'

On heels of Tesla/SpaceX CEO's renewed offer to buy Twitter, he references 'X'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2022 9:50 AM CDT
Musk's Next Plans Apparently Include an 'Everything App'
Elon Musk attends the opening of a Tesla factory in Gruenheide, Germany, on March 22.   (Patrick Pleul/Pool Photo via AP, File)

With Elon Musk's plan to purchase Twitter apparently back on, he's now teasing his next move, and it sounds just as ambitious. Those intentions came via a rather cryptic-sounding tweet on Tuesday, and speculation on what he might mean is already making the rounds. "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app," the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote, without elaborating other than to muse on a timeline: "Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong."

It's not the first time Musk has referenced "X" (which also happens to be the name of his young son): In August, the 51-year-old billionaire tweeted a simple "X.com" when someone asked him if he'd ever thought about creating his own social platform. And MarketWatch notes that in the early stages of the Twitter deal, Musk had talked with staffers there about building a "super app." X.com was also the name of the online bank he created in 1999, which eventually merged with a software company to form PayPal. And, when Musk's initial offer to buy Twitter emerged, he established a company called X Holdings to absorb the social media platform once the deal was completed.

It's not clear what exactly Musk has planned in regard to this "everything app," but Bloomberg notes it "sounds a lot like China's WeChat," which hundreds of millions of people use to do everything from sending messages and browsing social media to reading the news, making dinner reservations, booking rides, and sending payments. "WeChat functions as an all-in-one service—combining the uses of apps like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Substack," per the outlet, which notes Musk may be thinking of using WeChat as a blueprint for his own app. (More Elon Musk stories.)

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