Video calls and payments: this is how Twitter launches the challenge to WhatsApp

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That Elon Musk wants to make Twitter an app capable of offering more services is no mystery. Indeed, it is a declared goal even before the social network became the property of Mr. Tesla. Now that since deal seven months have passed since 44 billion dollars, however, the projects are starting to take shape. And Musk has revealed that Twitter engineers are working on a new way of encrypted communication between users.

Musk’s announcement

In a tweet, Musk said the latest version of the Twitter app contains changes to direct messages (DMs), which are private messages users send to each other through the platform. Changes concerning the type of conversation (answer mode), but also a new end-to-end type encryption, which – to understand – is the one used by WhatsApp for its chats, where only the sender and the recipient are in contact. able to see a message. In theory, therefore, Twitter and Musk would not be able to see or intercept direct messages between people. And the CEO underlined it in his own way in a tweet: “I won’t be able to see your DMs even if they put a gun to my head”.

New services coming soon

Encrypted messaging services have grown in popularity in recent years, thanks to the increased attention of users to privacy. But the real news is another. Musk announced that Twitter will soon be able to offer voice and video calls, so users can “talk to people anywhere in the world” without having to give them a phone number. A move that for many seems like a challenge to WhatsApp, the app owned by Meta which today has about 2 billion users and which for Zuckerberg’s galaxy has often seemed like a lifeline in the face of the uncertainties that have hit social networks such as Facebook and Instagram.

The Wechat model

WhatsApp recently launched an in-app payment service in Brazil. And it is aiming decisively at financial services to relaunch its business model. A mix, the one between direct communication and payments, which has already proven to work very well with applications such as WeChat. And that Musk has now targeted, in his attempt to make Twitter “the app for everything”.

However, it should be emphasized that often the new Twitter features promised by Musk are not immediately implemented. In February, for example, he announced that Twitter would introduce a feature to share advertising revenues with the creators of the platform. But there is still no trace of it.