This week, Elon Musk renamed Twitter as X, an additional step in his plan to imitate the Chinese mega-app WeChat.
Mr. Musk has long stated that he intends to expand his social media company, which he purchased for $44 billion (£34.4 billion) last year, into a much larger platform.
He has previously lauded WeChat, a so-called "everything app" that integrates chat, dating, payments, and social media, and stated that creating something "even close to that with Twitter...would be an enormous success."
This week, Mr. Musk announced in a post on X that "we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world" in the coming months.
He will hope that expanding X will lead to an increase in revenue, as the company has lost nearly half of its advertising revenue since Mr. Musk acquired it and is labouring under a mountain of debt.
Therefore, what is WeChat, and why does Mr. Musk wish to imitate it?
WeChat was introduced by the technology behemoth Tencent in 2011 and is now used by nearly all of China's 1.4 billion people.
It's an understatement to call it a superapp.
It offers messaging, voice and video calling, social media, food delivery, mobile payments, diversions, news, and even dating services.
It is comparable to WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Uber, Amazon, and Tinder, among many others.
It is so ingrained in Chinese culture that it is nearly impossible to survive there without it.
As shown in the images below, the user interfaces for its numerous components are distinct.
It began as a messaging platform similar to WhatsApp or iMessage, and its two most popular features are the WhatsApp-like "Chats" and the Facebook-like "Moments."
Its widely-used "Wallet" feature can be linked to debit and credit cards; the vast majority of shops and online retailers in China take WeChat payments by scanning QR codes. On WeChat, users can also pay household expenses, make investments, and obtain loans.
On WeChat, users can verify their social security information, pay their speeding tickets and schedule hospital appointments.
And during the pandemic, it became a necessity: while the entire nation was under zero-Covid restrictions, it was impossible to travel without a "health code" generated by the app.
However, there are numerous disadvantages to having so many features in a single app.
WeChat typically occupies tens of gigabytes of storage space on a mobile device's memory.
Concerns have been expressed about government censorship, surveillance, and other privacy issues as a result of WeChat's pervasiveness in every aspect of Chinese life.
China blocks access to numerous foreign websites, including news outlets such as the BBC, social media platforms like Facebook, and, ironically, Elon Musk's X.
This level of state control over the internet makes it exceedingly dangerous for WeChat users to criticise the government.
It is not uncommon for dissenting voices to have their accounts suspended for several days or weeks due to comments made in Chats or Moments.
Even those who share seemingly innocuous information have found themselves on the wrong side of government censors and had their accounts and chat rooms terminated.
According to Kitsch Liao, assistant director of the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council, super-apps like WeChat coincide with Beijing's goals of organising all aspects of life in order to maintain control over the country.
"Primarily to prevent 'political risk' - anything that could germinate into opposition and eventually pose a threat to the CCP's rule."
Will it succeed in Western Europe?
WeChat's enormous success in China is due to two main factors, according to Kecheng Fang of Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Due to the relatively late development of the internet in China, the majority of users access WeChat through their smartphones rather than desktop computers.
Which implies that they reside in the walled gardens of apps as opposed to the open web. "It is much simpler to create a 'everything app' on a smartphone than it is on a computer," he says.
Mr. Fang also asserts that China's lack of competition regulation, in contrast to the majority of Western nations, enables an app like WeChat to effectively block rival platforms, such as the purchasing platform Taobao and the video app Douyin.
Could Mr. Musk make a comparable app function outside of China? It's possible that we'll shortly find out, and experts believe that digital payments may play a crucial role.
Mr. Musk, according to Kendra Schaefer of the policy research firm Trivium China, has already recognised some of the key elements that have helped made WeChat "critical to daily life" in China, such as the integration of social media and digital payments.
She states that this could be the "secret sauce" of the super-app.
Edith Yeung of the investment firm Race Capital notes that the widespread adoption of digital payment technology is a significant distinction between China and the West.
While stores in China are required by law to accept currency, digital payments are far more prevalent.
She suggests that this disparity may be an impediment to Mr. Musk's ambitions. "It will take longer for the Western world to implement a truly cashless and credit card-free society," she says.
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