Musk wants Twitter to be like TikTok and WeChat

Elon Musk had a word with Twitter employees for the first time since his $44 billion take over offer.

In this conversation the Tesla CEO told the employees that he wants Twitter to hit 1 billion users. Musk elaborated that in order to achieve this goal, Twitter must ensure that “people are very entertained and informed”.

When asked how Twitter could increase its user base and engagement, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared his ambitious vision. He stated that he wanted the platform to provide more utility and a broader range of services in order to increase the amount of time users spent on the platform. Drawing parallels with China's super app WeChat. He stated that there is no equivalent to WeChat outside of China.

He claimed that in China, people basically live on WeChat. Twitter will be a huge success if it can replicate that.

Musk made multiple references to WeChat, a Chinese super app that has evolved over the years to combine social media, payments, ride-hailing and even games.

WeChat was available in India until 2020, when the government banned multiple Chinese apps citing national security reasons.

Musk also complimented TikTok’s algorithm for not being boring. He said that a similar model may be used to make Twitter more interesting in regard to informing people of serious issues.

Another noteworthy point the Tesla CEO made was to lean more heavily on subscriptions and payments, suggesting that people should pay to be verified.

Twitter’s infamous spam bot issue was also brought up. Consequently Musk was granted access to Twitter’s “firehose” API that contains every tweet as it is posted.

Regarding potential layoffs, Musk stated that Twitter as a company "needs to get healthy". He also stated that any firing will be based solely on performance.