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Comment by dutchCourage | Hacker News Reader

What does the path to success look like for "the everything app"?

I can't picture it. So far it looks like they're acting like a FAANG in a "fake it til you make it" move to try to attract money. But not only do they not have the scale, Twitter is also losing its place as the reference app for live text updates.

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An "everything app" is just an operating system. There is nothing to picture, we've been having them since the 1950s [1].

We could imagine some new way of operating over systems: for instance the Alan Kay original meaning of object-orientedness [2], or instead of a compiled binary to have some stable diffusion model + large language model which hallucinates the OS on the go [3].

But that's not what the quantifiably greediest person on the planet has in mind, by "everything app" they just mean "everything must be controlled by me, not by you".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_operating_systems

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjJaFG63Hlo

[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/opena...

Thank you for the read. The idea of an OS supplanted by an AI is fascinating.

> "everything must be controlled by me, not by you"

Right, the end goal I had in mind for "the everything app" is the control of the software (including communication), the data and the payment system by the same company.

Few companies have achieved that outside of China. I'm thinking, Apple, Google, Samsung in Korea maybe? And no one I know personally is fully tied to one ecosystem. My friends only use the individual services they need. Becoming WeChat will not happen.

Even the idea of Twitter growing into a Google size company seems completely unrealistic. Meta struggles with achieving this and right now they're more popular than Twitter.

If they can replicate WeChat it might be a good outcome, since WeChat is essentially the everything app for most China

Problem is that the CCP is basically intimately tied to it so WeChat has massive advantages there.

This is what he's been envisioning since back in the PayPal days.

The problem for Musk is that the US, EU, UK, AU etc are not remotely interested in a mainstream commerce platform that takes a lax approach to KYC/AML.

And despite Musk's delusions the "blue tick" program is not a suitable verification foundation to build payments on top of.

There isn't a chance that I'll ever use something like WeChat. I keep all of those components on separate companies because I don't ever want to be tied into something that has that kind of power over my life. Having choice is far better than integration.

I've switched banks 3 times over four decades, ISP more times than that, comms channels a couple of times as well (most recently due to Musk's acquisition of Twitter) and will probably do so again at least once. Tying it all together with an 'everything app' seems like a stupendously stupid move to me (from the consumers perspective). Especially with an unhinged guy like Musk at the helm.

Indeed, just hearing the stories here on HN about how people are suddenly locked out of just their gmail or other accounts without explanation or recourse is pretty good reason to not but all your eggs in one dystopian corporate basket.

There is a reason why Facebook/Whatsapp/Instagram is not in one app called Meta. It does not work too well with western audiences - cluttered and too busy mobile apps do not succeed.

If Whatsapp failed to become WeChat organically, even though it's installed in most phones around the world and in some places you can already make payments through it, do you really think Twitter can pull it off by brute force?

I don't know how he can be this stupid to try such a thing. Many companies tried to replicate WeChat in the west, and they all failed because nobody wants to have some gigantic clusterfuck of an app on their phone. It works in China only because of China's political system, as in people literally have no choice.

I half think some of the issue with the everything app idea is that the west already has everything apps, they're called "Android" and "iOS". It's the slightly weird regulatory / political situation in China that's led to WeChat becoming a thing.

And that tracks perfectly with what he's doing, because he's betting on the fascists winning the next election cycle, so they can bail him out by making X-Twitter the official "free speech" platform of the new dictatorship.

That'll not fly at least not outside of the US.

Nobody (in power) want's a (foreign) app that can essentially ban a citizen from live arbitrarily.

Regulators are no longer asleep at the wheel when it comes to tech, as can be seen on the HN front page every other day, and in this case it might be better to have nothing than something controlled by Elon Musk.

Such an App is a political risk and the only reason it works in China is because it's basically an extension of the governemnt.

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