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Comment by rcme | Hacker News Reader

> Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app.

I wish this notion of the "everything app" would die in the West. Yes, China has a highly successful everything app, but it exists because the government wants a centralized place to control digital activity. Such a model makes no sense in the west. We already have an everything app, it's called "App Store."

So many apps try to this strategy. For instance, Snapchat added games to the app. Why would I want to play a game in Snapchat when I have a nearly unlimited selection of games in the app store?

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Along those same lines, the weirdest thing to me about the concept of an “everything app” is that it basically just describes an operating system.

iOS, MacOS, Windows, Android, Linux, etc. are already the “everything” apps.

Why the do we need an app that can do everything inside of an app that can already do everything?

It’s like wearing a hat on top of your hat.

I think your thesis about WeChat being more about a domestic choke point over the freedom of computing in China is largely correct.

We (consumers) don't need it, but companies like the idea of complete control over an app you never leave

Browsers also meet the everything app definition. The only gap I see is that there's not a single identity provider in front of Twitter, Venmo, and Robinhood, which seems to be Musk's vision. When you think of it that way it becomes clear it's about building a single social graph and the lock-in and surveillance risks become really glaring.

Didn't Facebook Connect fill that identity gap?

Browsers are the operating system for the web, yes.

Because they want to monetise and own the entire thing, even more than the most successful "everything app" (iOS) already does.

> Why would I want to play a game in Snapchat when I have a nearly unlimited selection of games in the app store?

I agree with you for that specific case: Snapchat games. But for a lot of other things, like payments (as Elon himself discussed doing) I appreciate some degree of convergence. Google has already done this sort of thing to a large degree and it's one of the reasons I like using their products. The reason it's desirable is convenience: using one UI and one login can be a pleasant experience.

Twitter has a long way to go though. I dislike their UI and my recent attempts to log in to their Android app resulted in me just deleting the app and using their web UI instead.

The payments thing is nonsense. Why would anyone want to use Twitter for payments when they could use a ton of existing options that work fine? Remember, Snapchat tried payments too. And that at least sort of made sense, since people already message their friends on Snapchat, and sending payments to friends is a common use-case. But Twitter?

He’s throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. Blue check subscriptions were a bust, so now he’ll try hiring someone to woo advertisers back. If that doesn’t work I guess he’ll try payments or something.

Payments makes sense. It facilitates audience monetization. Instead of people going to patreon they can send payments on twitter.

If all they want to do is supplant Patreon, fine, maybe they can? But Patreon’s valuation seems to be 1-2B. That doesn’t move the needle and is anyway far less ambitious than the stated “everything app” goal for payments.

> but it exists because the government wants a centralized place to control digital activity

Speaking as someone who witnessed them from 0 to everything - it really has not much to do with that.

It has to do with how fast mobile payment swept through the country to be the connecting factor for all online services and it has to do with how easy it was and is for big players to out compete or swallow small innovators and harvest their innovations.

It already did, that was what CompuServe, AOL, and arguably Facebook etc. were. Musk seems to be calling back to things that were big when he was growing up. I don't think there's such a demand for the return of the internet portal.

>Yes, China has a highly successful everything app, but it exists because the government wants a centralized place to control digital activity.

You say this as if political parties here wouldn't be interested in that. ;P

Not if they had to share with each other.

I think everything apps are actually sort of a logical conclusion for HCI. The one that my job uses has redundancies everywhere, i.e. a global search bar, multiple links to the same page spread across the website, etc. It's very disorganized, but I've also found it to be strangely useful.

Maybe take this with a grain of salt but when I'm drunk I hate backtracking through UIs and being hampered by organization. I think an everything app would be useful in that case. And in the same vein as "the average human has less than two arms", I feel like the average end user is basically drunk.

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