Elon Musk wants to make Twitter into a "super-app" on the Chinese model. His first step is to allow stock and crypto trading on the platform in partnership with eToro.
“Fintwit” is how the new financial service on Twitter has been renamed. On Monday, Twitter officially started its partnership with the financial service app eToro following on from an announcement made four days ago.
Now, Twitter will showcase the movement of stocks and cryptocurrencies with a direct link on the same asset in eToro. There, the user will be able to start trading that same asset.
NEW - #Bitcoin trading on Twitter via eToro is now live pic.twitter.com/3wPHJKcSjK
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) April 17, 2023
Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro, was extremely satisfied with this partnership with Twitter. “As we’ve grown over the past three years immensely, we’ve seen more and more of our users interact on Twitter [and] educate themselves about the markets,” he said to CNBC.
“There is very high quality content, real-time content on financial analysis of companies and what’s happening around the world,” Assia continued. “We believe this partnership will enable us to reach those new audiences and connect better the brands of Twitter and eToro.”
One of the most popular features of eToro is its ability to copy trades of other users.
This partnership is the first positive business news for Twitter since Elon Musk took over as the new CEO. He personally acquired the platform for $44 billion last October, laying off almost 80% of the workforce.
Many advertising firms left the platform, though Musk himself reassured investors that they were starting to return last Wednesday.
Twitter as a super-app
Despite heavy backlash, Elon Musk never gave up his goal of turning Twitter into the first Western “super-app”. In fact, the partnership with eToro is just the first real step towards achieving that goal.
A “super-app” is a phone application where it is possible to manage most of the usual online chores. Personal finance, online shopping, social networking or simply using a search engine are all activities possible on a super-app.
Currently, the only super-apps existing in the world are used in China. Apps like WeChat allow Chinese citizens to use only one application for all the daily online activities.
Nevertheless, these apps are heavily controlled and often censored by the Chinese government. In fact, it is believed that these apps are used to better control the population, storing massive amounts of data for each of their users.
Were Twitter to become a super-app, it will have the same “surveillance” capabilities as its Chinese equivalents. The only difference is that data will be in the hands of Elon Musk instead of the Chinese government.
A scary thought indeed, even though Elon Musk seems able to carry on his dream by allowing traders to use Twitter as a base platform. What the future holds next is unknown, but this is surely only the beginning.
