Twitter purchase will drive Elon Musk's 'everything app' project

Billionaire reintroduces personal idea for 'X' platform

Elon Musk raises his phone towards the sky at an event in August. Reuters

Elon Musk said buying Twitter would speed up the creation of something he called “X, the everything app", suggesting he has ambitions for adding services to the blogging tool he wants to take private.

In his first public remarks since reviving the effort to buy Twitter for about $44 billion, Mr Musk called the acquisition “an accelerant” to building a kind of multi-function app.

He tweeted, "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app."

In the past, Mr Musk has mused aloud about making Twitter more useful, indicating that he wouldd like it to be more like WeChat, a messaging service that is hugely popular in China, and TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing service that has taken off around the world.

He has drawn parallels to so-called super apps that are widely used in parts of Asia.

They give users a single smartphone application for a broad range of services, from messaging and other communications to ordering food and summoning a car.

A western parallel would be Meta's Facebook, which offers many services for users in the US and globally, all on one app.

The Tesla chief executive did not explain what “X” was, but he said in a follow-up tweet that Twitter “probably accelerates X by three to five years".

Although Mr Musk has not disclosed his plans for Twitter, he has said the service could charge business and government users.

Agencies contributed reporting

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