There’s some subtlety here between the terms platform and app. For example, Amazon is a single platform (unified login and billing), which gives it many of the advantages of the super app. But Amazon doesn’t have a super app. They have separate apps for shopping, Kindle, Prime Video, Alexa, and etc.
I’ve never used WeChat but I wonder the value prop of having a single app which has its own navigation inside, as opposed to splitting the app into separate apps for each verticals and having that navigation and context switching happen at the phone OS level.
With Elon Musk’s idea of providing a super app, I wonder if he truly means a singular app or if he just wants to build a company with many services in the style of Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. The term super app sounds cool but when you think it through he’s just vaguely saying he wants to make Twitter expand to other verticals. The question is, which verticals? And what competitive advantage does he have over existing tech companies? (who by the way are already under scrutiny for possibly being monopolies)
I’ve never used WeChat but I wonder the value prop of having a single app which has its own navigation inside, as opposed to splitting the app into separate apps for each verticals and having that navigation and context switching happen at the phone OS level.
With Elon Musk’s idea of providing a super app, I wonder if he truly means a singular app or if he just wants to build a company with many services in the style of Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. The term super app sounds cool but when you think it through he’s just vaguely saying he wants to make Twitter expand to other verticals. The question is, which verticals? And what competitive advantage does he have over existing tech companies? (who by the way are already under scrutiny for possibly being monopolies)