Elon Musk’s everything app ‘X’ sounds a lot like China’s WeChat

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

Here’re five things about WeChat that could serve as a template for Musk:

·         It’s much more than social media. A true super-app, hundreds of millions use WeChat daily to book rides, make dining reservations, order food. That’s possible through a vibrant network of “mini programs” or lite apps that connect directly to WeChat’s interface.

·         WeChat is a fintech titan, one of China’s biggest payments and online finance networks. Users send each other money, pay for goods and services, and even borrow money.

·         It’s one of the country’s most popular news and entertainment portals. As in the US, many younger users increasingly get much of their news through their social media feeds, just even more so in China.

·         Businesses use it too. The WeChat mini-programs economy is worth roughly $240 billion and grew about 12.5% to 450 million users in 2021.

·         In short, WeChat functions as an all-in-one service -- combining the uses of apps like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Instagram and Substack.

At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk stressed that he uses Twitter a lot and that he has ideas on ways to make the platform “radically better.” He compared his ambitions for Twitter with the vision he had for X, a financial services company he co-founded in 1999.

There’s one thing though that Musk -- an advocate for internet freedoms -- is unlikely to take a page from. WeChat is heavily monitored and censored: armies of AI and human moderators help ensure it’s clean of content the ruling Communist Party deems undesirable. That’s everything from lewd posts to dissent and criticism of the government.