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Super apps are proliferating across emerging markets

269 points by ycafrica 4y ago

user_named 4y ago
Long article that doesn't provide the answer to its own title, but a lot of nonsense. Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser. It is popular because China is mobile first, you search within wechat instead of in a browser because the web is not mobile first but apps are.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  That’s like saying the Apple App Store is a browser.
  - helloworld97 4y ago
  - idle_zealot 4y ago
    It's more like saying that iOS is a browser. But that's precisely backwards. iOS is an operating system. Browsers are also basically operating systems. Superapps also behave like operating systems. This is probably where the "superapp is like a browser" sentiment comes from.
    - oneswarm 4y ago
      Wechat is a brower with sdk included which website owners can easily utilize to get the user info and money. The only thing the website owner needs to do is associate the website with wechat through registertion and authetication （in the form of mini program）. If users can put the user info and payments info into chrome or firefox brower through some kind of open protocol，and every website has the abality to issue request to utilize this information，then the browers will be the more decenterized super app.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  > Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser. ...and a payment service, and a search app, and a messaging app, and a social media service, and a video calling platform, and a VOIP calling service, and a video sharing platform
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - anubiskhan 4y ago
    All things I can do in my browser
    - chazeon 4y ago
      Except that right now simplified Chinese contents are dying on the open web due to the walled gardens these super apps built. There are also payment and some government services now must be done in these super apps in China.
  - ElCheapo 4y ago
    Now go and see how many APIs Google Chrome has
    - lelandfe 4y ago
      All of those things I named are built by WeChat and live in the app, first-party: WeChat Pay, WeChat Moments, WeChat Channels, WeChat Out, etc. "You can technically visit any site you want" is really not an apt rebuttal to an app that contains a multitude of first-party features.
      - ElCheapo 4y ago
        WeChat is controlled by the government. They don't need an open ecosystem: if the government mandates an app then everyone will use that app. It's completely unnecessary to implement some kind of public facing API to offer the functionalities to supposed third parties. There are none.
- helloworld97 4y ago
neodypsis 4y ago
There have been many attempts to replicate the "super app" phenomenon that is WeChat.
- solarmist 4y ago
  Wasn't Line the predecessor super app?
  - mathverse 4y ago
    Not really. Line is a fork of Kakaotalk but now these two dont have much in common. Line is also quite successful in Thailand and Taiwan.
    - solarmist 4y ago
      Also Japan. But No, I mean the first widely used app that does all kinds of different things. Not literally a predecessor.
    - numpad0 4y ago
      LINE was a clone, not a fork. I'm not sure about timeline of superapps/in-app-apps though, I ... think mobage(moba-gay not mob-age) for i-mode phones, was one early example of a portal with messaging + apps. LINE replicated that with iOS apps, but more generic apps were only implemented in 2019. Either examples were rather simplistic games only. Bot-based text interfaces similar to various SMS self-serve systems existed for LINE, but I believe those were not offered as apps. WeChat might have been influenced by those predecessors, but as far as I can see, in-app mini-apps are understood to be a phenomenon originating in China and Southeast Asia, even in Japan. So it might be a stretch to call it a predecessor or pioneer in superapp, more like one of precursors.
      - lifthrasiir 4y ago
        I think you are pretty much right on all counts, probably except for the very definition of super-apps. I think the original article used the term for an app that can serve for multiple purposes, not necessarily open to 3rd parties. If we follow this definition Kakaotalk or LINE are definitely super apps, but WeChat can be considered as the second generation super app. (Third party apps in Kakaotalk or LINE are still pretty limited in this aspect to my knowledge. Kakaotalk in particular seems to have assimiliated any third-party interaction into its chatting platform.)
amadeuspagel 4y ago
A different theory: The ultimate super app is the browser. The browser is dominant in the west, because we started using the internet with desktop computers, where a website was the ultimate way to reach people. When mobile started, everyone had to have an app. Surfing the web on mobile at the beginning didn't work that well. At the same time installing apps was a lot easier then on desktop. In the west, the app model matches the website model. Most popular apps started as websites, later made an app - facebook, youtube ... In emerging markets, they "skipped" the desktop, started with a smartphone. Installing apps is still more of a hassle then visiting websites, so a super app makes more sense then a super website.
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  I agree with this theory somewhat. I also think the browser had the runway to become the ultimate open mobile super app, but dropped the ball. For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. A mobile browser today is mostly just tabs that view shrunk down web pages. I am still waiting for a true mobile first web experience. This might even require a new kind of web page format.
  - dahdum 4y ago
    > For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. The reason is simple, the 30% app store profits. Very low incentives for either of the 2 major players to improve things, and tens of billions of reasons yearly to slow things down.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Exactly. Still, what happened to FirefoxOS?
      - rakoo 4y ago
        It was forked into KaiOS, targeting feature phones and allowing devs to use web technologies for building apps.
Dig1t 4y ago
My question is, how do super apps actually work? On iOS, does the WeChat app actually download an iOS app bundle and execute it? Or does it do something like a browser and execute some kind of markup + interpreted language like JavaScript? If it’s the former, I thought Apple banned apps in their App Store from doing that. Seems like maybe they made an exception for WeChat..? If so does that exception only exist within China or also in the US?
- chazeon 4y ago
  It’s the second case, markup + JS.
- pxeger1 4y ago
  Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store either, so I guess their ban is not very strict.
  - ryan-c 4y ago
    > Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store They do, in fact, ban web browsers other than Safari. I know what you're going to say - "Chrome is available for iOS". It's just Safari with a different UI. All the parsing, rendering and javascript runtime code is Safari.
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      It's a complete fucking pain, too.
    - alwillis 4y ago
      Just to be clear, because apps aren’t allowed to run untrusted code (like random JavaScript in a JIT) via interpreter or compiler, any app that shows web content has to use WebKit-based APIs. And while WebKit is the HTML and JavaScript engine that Safari uses, browsers on iOS are quite different than Safari. I often use Brave because I like the UI and it blocks trackers etc. out of the box and certainly has features and UX that’s different than Safari’s. In my day to day usage, it makes zero difference that Safari and Brave use the same rendering engine on iOS.
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
Siri/Alexa are super-apps but with literally zero discoverability of features in their UX.
- enos_feedler 4y ago
  Siri is just an alternative front end to your phone's touch-based UI. So is iOS also a super app?
  - oriolid 4y ago
    Or super apps are just a second launcher on top of the iOS or Android launcher, but the app selection is controlled by the super app's maintainer, not Apple or Google.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Xorg, the original super-app.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Siri is not, almost every request I give it results in a google search.
refurb 4y ago
I hate super apps. It made me appreciate the simple and clean UX of apps developed in the US and Europe. Nothing worse than opening up Shoppe or Grab and immediately being slammed with 3 dozen icons that you need to scroll through. Hell, even my banking app looked like that. Select "other requests" and I get to scroll through about 40 different icons for stuff to do. And they just offer banking. Apps like Grab offer banking, transport, food, digital wallet, etc. Seems super clunky to me, but what I've been told is the goal is for that app to do "everything" so you never need a different app.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  Our family uses Grab app a lot and yes the dashboard is a mess. At one point Grab has games in it too.
  - hestefisk 4y ago
    Grab also has / had a built-in messaging functionality. The UI is a sad mess.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  The other problem with super apps, at least where I am now, is a quarter of the functions don’t work, or work but break the viewport, or work but put the app into an unusable state until you hard reload it. The more functions there are, the more testing that needs to happen and doesn’t… “in emerging markets”.
- hestefisk 4y ago
  This is exactly what the DBS app is like as well.
mathverse 4y ago
Superapps are a deadend if you dont have a huge population like China that is comfortable with centralization.
- seydor 4y ago
  because there are fewer monopolies in the western internet?
  - mathverse 4y ago
    Simply because westerners dont really want to trust one single corporation.
    - seydor 4y ago
      They don't? Apple and google exist
      - mathverse 4y ago
        That’s nowhere near what WeChat is for chinese people. Both Google and Apple can be totally ignored but you need WeChat for everyday life in China.
        seydor 4y ago
        that s not what we re talking about though. There is no indication that people are not using Applepay and GooglePay because of trust concerns, it's because it is not available widely
        foxhop 4y ago
        super app: "covid zero", red/green QR code app controls human movement in China.
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      yeah we prefer the illusion of 2-3 conglomerates
lukasb 4y ago
Great article. Was reading through thinking "okay so why aren't super apps popular in the west?" and lo and behold, they tackle that question brilliantly.
intrasight 4y ago
"super app": a browser within an "app" that knows who you are and knows how to move your money around.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
I've built startups both in the US and in an "emerging market", so I'll offer some of my own answers here. 1. Consumers are less tech-savvy, so having a single app as a starting point makes everything far easier than having to install many apps. 2. Brand is much more valuable. In emerging markets, with (overall) less regulation (and self-regulation) of markets, trust and brand carries a LOT of weight. If I trust company X with my payments, I'm also more likely to trust them with my transportation, my food delivery, etc (than having to verify/trust a new party). Having a trusted brand makes it very easy to expand into new verticals. 3. Regulatory clout. Once you have the scale (or political connections) to navigate regulation in one vertical, it's much easier to apply that to new verticals. You might "know the right people", know how to navigate the bureaucracy better... or in some cases, it's just easier for the government to trust you with a license than someone who's unknown to them. 4. Talent is more sparse, so clustering it in one place tends to make things more efficient. 5. Funding might be hard to come by, but existing companies either already have the cash or have connections to investors. Overall, these things in combination just make it a lot easier for an existing company to launch a new vertical than for an upstart to do so. With time and as markets evolve, you'd probably expect more specialization to occur, but by then the super apps may already be entrenched enough to defend themselves. For similar reasons, family-owned conglomerates tend to be very successful in emerging markets and span across a variety of unrelated industries. You just bought a place in a housing development built by a company owned by wealthy family X, then you go to the supermarket to buy some milk but you're not sure which brand to trust... Then you see the carton manufactured by another company from family X.
- brightball 4y ago
  In the US the “super app” was probably AOL.
  - GordonS 4y ago
    And perhaps Compuserve for the UK and Europe. Ah, makes me feel nostalgic, I loved Compuserve!
  - signal11 4y ago
hulitu 4y ago
> When users shook their phones in a specific way, they’d be connected to others on the Weixin network who had shaken Compare that with Whatsapp which want access to your phone number and contacts.
- djbusby 4y ago
  This feature was in Bump in 2008.
ak217 4y ago
This article is trying to explain the rise of super-apps in China through the lens of user experience, but I think a more likely explanation is government regulation and platform moderation. In Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to forbid apps from doing too many different things at once, so as to preserve their platform advantage. Also, in Western markets, companies that develop apps are wary of developing super-apps because they anticipate exponentially more attention from regulators the more things their app does. In China, Apple was worried they'd be shut out of the market so they ceded some control over the platform by allowing super-apps; Google never had much control over their platform; and regulators are more concerned with protectionism than preventing abuse.
- pcl 4y ago
  > In Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to forbid apps from doing too many different things at once, so as to preserve their platform advantage. I’ve never heard about this before. Is this an official policy of either company? Do you have any citations to share for more reading?
  - digitaLandscape 4y ago
  - noahmasur 4y ago
    I've mostly seen this for game platforms on iOS: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-let-the-steam-link-app-on-the-ios/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-let-... I think it's waffled back and forth on game streaming: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gaming-microsoft-xcloud-google-stadia-ios-app-store-guidelines-violations https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gamin... https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-xbox-xcloud-streaming-exclusives-iphone-ipad-gamepas https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-xbox-x... Netflix also has to offer their games as separate packages: https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-reportedly-only-be-available-to-download-individually-on-ios https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-reportedly-...
seydor 4y ago
because other apps are too complicated , too greedy, full of popups, and other 'cool things' that techies consider de rigueur these days. Command line interfaces are always the best
itake 4y ago
My day job just built a WhatsApp bot to interact with customers because our super app was too big for low-end devices. Meta also subsidizes internet for WhatsApp in developing countries, so they don't have to only use the service on wifi.
KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
I kinda hate how the "across emerging markets" superapps are just the last paragraph and the 98% of the article is about wechat which everyone already knows about. How are those superapps doing in other markets? That would be interesting information.
- vinibrito 4y ago
  Here in Brazil they are not as powerful as WeChat is in China, but they are aggressively growing and pushing the market. But they are largely a business push force, not a market pull force.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Can’t think of any super apps that are doing well in India, and that’s a huge market. Our most popular messaging app is Whatsapp that only does messaging. Our most popular payments app is Google Pay that only does payments.
  - toast0 4y ago
    India likes its protectionism. You're not going to get a superapp from outside. Maybe Jio would do one?
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      Even JIO has several separate apps for everything. It even separates Cinema from TV for some reason
      - stoicjumbotron 4y ago
        Agreed and I never understood why. Apart from the benefit of pushing updates individually to each separate apps, what is the use case of such "bifurcation"?
        cuteboy19 4y ago
ryandrake 4y ago
The article (and the embedded NYT video) seem to imply that WeChat is not just a dominant app, but is pretty much the only way to do things in China. For example the quote, "try and pay with cash for lunch, and you’ll look like a luddite." So, what if you cannot use WeChat? Or if you're banned by their AI (which happens all the time with western apps)? Or if you simply choose not to? There must be other ways to book rides, hire services, pay people, chat, E-mail, and so on.. I (in the West) opt out of using Facebook+all FB properties, Twitter, Google, and so on, and I still have the full ability to live as a normal person. Surely China has cash and the ability to book things over the phone...?
- nomay 4y ago
  COVID measures made WeChat a must have for anyone except toddlers, since you need to show your green COVID qr code to enter public spaces, and almost any Chinese had done one if not daily obligatory mass testing, in which various WeChat applets are required. You can live perfectly fine without it before, buy you simply can't legally live in China without a working, updated and ready-to-open WeChat now, since last year. The CCP also did their whole national census on a WeChat applet, it's the defacto governing tool.
3qz 4y ago
> Every aspect of a typical Chinese person’s life, not just online but also off is conducted through [this] single app Every aspect of a typical Chinese person’s life, not just online but also off is conducted through [this] single app What happens to people that get banned from WeChat?
- jon-wood 4y ago
  I suspect life gets very difficult. When visiting a supplier in China a few years ago I tried to buy a coffee from the place downstairs and eventually had to get someone from the supplier to do so because they had no method of ordering and paying other than a WeChat app, and as someone without a Chinese bank account I was unable to pay for anything via WeChat.
  - White_Wolf 4y ago
    I had to go to China for 1 week+ for work and was in the same boat. Found a few places that only take WeChat but I ask someone around to pay for me and give them cash. More often than not it would be the person at the register. People are quite helpful if you ask nicely.
- yep31 4y ago
  What happens to web developers that get banned from the internet?
- nomay 4y ago
  You are shut out, and with the latest CCP censorship measures you are forbidden to creat accounts "web-wide". So I guess you should just keep your mouth shut other than harmonious online activities to avoid that doomsday situation, like me, I never use WeChat or Weibo to do anything other than keeping in basic touch, since you don't know which mundane word would become sensitive, trigger the censors and get you banned, there's no appeal.
  - White_Wolf 4y ago
    I keep a fb account exactly for the same reason. Keeping in touch with friends and family from all over. I'd never post anything because you never know what random s..t gets you banned for life next year.
aunty_helen 4y ago
Rappi. Massive app in Latin America. The level of usefulness and convenience is astounding. I ordered some items I forgot to get at the supermarket the other day, arrived in 4 minutes. In my home first world country, next day delivery is touted as a massive success by execs on linkedin. For how powerful Rappi has become, not only did they beat Uber Eats completely out of Colombia (their service just isn't at the same standard anywhere), but they also beat McDonalds who tried to go exclusive with their own app for a year before coming back to the platform.
- axg11 4y ago
  Uber Eats has to build a model that works worldwide, including in the US, Canada, UK, EU, etc. where unemployment rates are relatively low. I don’t think same hour delivery will ever be long-term sustainable in a country with low unemployment. Emerging economies are a different story. Unemployment is usually high so there’s an abundance of workers to power the logistics behind these super apps.
  - jorvi 4y ago
    > I don’t think same hour delivery will ever be long-term sustainable in a country with low unemployment. In Europe we have something called ‘flash orders’, where your groceries are usually delivered within 10 minutes. Way crazier than same-day. Like you said, it does make one wonder if those companies (Gorillas, Flink, Getir) will ever be sustainable long term.
    - yunohn 4y ago
      Yeah, these have been around in Asia for years now. The European ones are heavily restricted in items and jack up prices, to make it even remotely profitable. In India, you can order literally anything - it’s pretty cool. Checkout Dunzo or Grofers. The former even acts as a local courier or task runner.
      - jorvi 4y ago
        Oh I am aware, from Indonesia where they have Gojek. Here in the West I just see it have the same trajectory as Uber. Investors pump in massive amounts of money which allows the service to be sold at a loss, then investors realize they’re not gonna have unicorn returns, at which point the companies jack their rates. And whereas Uber is still a better alternative to what it replaced (the fucked up taxi industry), flash order companies don’t really have that same “I’d rather still use them” boon.
xcambar 4y ago
I've missed a career opportunity to lead a super app for the Indian market. I truly regret it of course but I'm thankful at least for the truly enlightening conversations I've had the luck to have, with people having large scale jobsian visions and the means to achieve them. It reinforced my appreciation for hiring processes, when one can be lucky enough to meet true leaders with exceptional visions.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Are super apps actually working in the Indian market? I know Paytm has tried so hard but its not really gained much traction outside of payments.
  - Sateeshm 4y ago
    It's not even the go-to for payments. Plenty of competition from gpay,phonepe, etc.
- mannymanman 4y ago
  Why did you not take that offer?
  - xcambar 4y ago
    The offer did not take me, to be accurate :D
    - mannymanman 4y ago
      Next time!
meltyness 4y ago
It'll be fine as long as they write and maintain perfectly secure software and infrastructure, and stay competitively up to date and performant.
vishnugupta 4y ago
I worked on two super apps for a good part of the last decade; one in India and one in South East Asia so here's my take based on those experience. As the article points out, most of the are trying to apply the playbook of WeChat. IMO it succeeded because they built an enormous user base which has a terrific daily engagement. Once daily engagement is cracked it becomes not all that hard (but not trivial) to add more use cases. P2P payments, file sharing, and you name it. However, in India and SEA the companies tried to go the other way. To take Indian example, most of the fintechs in their quest to increase engagement began adding chat. However, by then people had adopted to WA so it miserably failed. But they still kept at it and added more fintech related use cases; to take PayTM as an example one could do just about anything around payments with that. Insurance, toll payments, utility payment, pay to merchant, pay off EMIs, investments and what not. So they did achieve decent daily engagement. Grab has been trying to do the same. Going from Taxi app to a generic payments app. It's all about engagement. It's an enormous investment though. Not only about rolling out features but also to build two sided market places (example; merchant payment requires onboarding merchants too), onboarding utilities etc., However the profit from them are minuscule despite good utilisation because the recipient of the payment (like merchant, or utility providers) isn't going to give away their share of money. So, in the end all the fintechs resort to lending which is the biggest chunk of profit generator. It's a shame that the article doesn't mention it.
- Ayesh 4y ago
  I have worked with one company that competes with Grab in Indonesia, and like you said, it's about daily engagement even at the cost of losing money in some fronts. Food delivery and ride sharing are not that profitable considering the massive amount of logistics it takes, but wallet payments and the rest of that ecosystem can easily set off that loss.
- majani 4y ago
  This is what should have been Facebook's next big bet for this coming decade: to make WhatsApp into the superapp to end all superapps.
  - 4y ago
miki123211 4y ago
The truth is, traditional, western mobile apps really suck, and create a lot of friction. Some of that friction only exists to maintain Apple's and Google's competitive advantages (think web browsers being overly limited), but a large part of it exists because we choose privacy over user convenience. As I understand it, weChat mini apps have the ability to reliably identify their users and keep their data across multiple devices, with no accounts and no user interaction. Imagine opening an app for recipes, adding a recipe and knowing that it's always going to be there, no matter the device, with no signing up, no figuring out a password, no complicated login screens, nothing. You open an app and it just works. Same thing extends to payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay aren't terribly popular with users as they require extra steps to set up, and in app purchases have ridiculous fees and can't be used for goods sold outside the app. The only western system that ever came close was probably Minitel[1], which was just too outdated technologically to survive the age of the modern internet. iCloud would also be a competitor if it worked cross platform. [1] https://afridigest.com/super-apps-in-emerging-markets/ https://afridigest.com/super-apps-in-emerging-markets/
- baby 4y ago
  > weChat mini apps I always said that Facebook can innovate in different ways: 1. use their already existing social graph to produce OTHER apps that are useful 2. use their tool with a new social graph Number 2 has been done once I believe. It's called workplace. Number 1 is what Wechat is doing on steroids, and Facebook has done almost none of that. It's insane that they're not taking advantage of this and are just adding noise to the useful tool that facebook used to be.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - greenonions 4y ago
    You're forgetting that Facebook can see the future and everyone is wearing helmets and gloves and living in a digital world that looks like a mobile game from 2008.
beorno 4y ago
My take after 20+ years in China living with WeChat and Alipay: 1) Green field: no or few incumbents or legacy platforms or regulatory capture to deal with - infrastructure in the West is antiquated and fossilized in comparison. 2) Open to change: People and businesses are living in a world that's extremely cut-throat and dynamic, and so they expect change, and are willing to try new things - the West is more conservative in comparison (e.g., the proliferation of QR code use cases seamlessly bridging offline/online that never took off in the West except when force by CVOID). 3) Free pass from platforms: Due to "be nice to China" Apple has turn a blind eye towards WeChat and Alipay running an app store inside of an app (which has always been against their regulations, and which MANY companies would like to do). 4) Hard work and (used to be) cheaper labor: 996 super-hard work ethic means they churn out features and blitz scale really well - they're just more aggressive. 5) In touch with the offline world: Companies in China have to deal with the reality of an extreme variety of users, from cities to countryside, from young to old, from rich to poor. They often build out big sales and support orgs of people walking around from store to store, across the country, whereas I think many startups in the West (often due to cost reasons) tend to do almost everything online. And increasingly: 6) Government support. WeChat is pretty much the ERP system of China today. You can do everything through/on it. In some ways it's a utility. I guess every country could benefit enormously in terms of control and efficiency by having an platform that provides authentication, authorization, and payments as a base layer for all other apps. The government puts people / teams / divisions inside of organizations to ensure things are "running smoothly", but this works best if they have a few big companies to deal with - not a myriad of small startups. WeChat and Alipay are becoming more and more nationalized, and are already "too big to fail". I miss not having WeChat in the West, though I'd of course wish it was done in a less 1984-ish way. Life has ballooned in complexity, and bureaucracy has gotten out of hand in the West... We need a radical streamlining in order to regain back our productivity (and not waste time filling out checks, waiting in line, calling/faxing, filling out forms, etc). Super apps, if done well like in WeChat's case, can offer that . (I grew up in Europe, spent 20 years in China, and now living in North America.)
- jhatemyjob 4y ago
  It's just (3). Apple doesn't allow them outside of China, so they only work in China. That's all there is to it.
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
China presence is significant in emerging markets
immigrantheart 4y ago
Seems the usual HN crowds that are worried of centralization and monopoly praising these super apps. What am I missing?
- BiometricAndy 4y ago
godmode2019 4y ago
Hot take: western apps stole the super app concept from Chinese companies specifically wechat. Hot take2: The proliferation of video and streaming was driven by the Chinese. Who's language is much harder to type on a phone, their app stores this media was exploding and western apps started to copy without really knowing why it was popular.
- aembleton 4y ago
  Which western apps stole the super app concept?
markdown 4y ago
> emerging markets Is that all we are to you?
stuntkite 4y ago
- lokokokonut 4y ago
jwithington 4y ago
WeChat was built in 2-3 months, approved by an email that just read it: “Do it now.” cc: Patrick C. to add it to that fast project list
MR4D 4y ago
So, AOL but for apps. Looks like we got the future before others - clearly it is not evenly distributed.

269 points by ycafrica 4y ago

Long article that doesn't provide the answer to its own title, but a lot of nonsense. Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser. It is popular because China is mobile first, you search within wechat instead of in a browser because the web is not mobile first but apps are.

wodenokoto 4y ago
That’s like saying the Apple App Store is a browser.
- helloworld97 4y ago
- idle_zealot 4y ago
  It's more like saying that iOS is a browser. But that's precisely backwards. iOS is an operating system. Browsers are also basically operating systems. Superapps also behave like operating systems. This is probably where the "superapp is like a browser" sentiment comes from.
  - oneswarm 4y ago
    Wechat is a brower with sdk included which website owners can easily utilize to get the user info and money. The only thing the website owner needs to do is associate the website with wechat through registertion and authetication （in the form of mini program）. If users can put the user info and payments info into chrome or firefox brower through some kind of open protocol，and every website has the abality to issue request to utilize this information，then the browers will be the more decenterized super app.
lelandfe 4y ago
> Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser. ...and a payment service, and a search app, and a messaging app, and a social media service, and a video calling platform, and a VOIP calling service, and a video sharing platform
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anubiskhan 4y ago
  All things I can do in my browser
  - chazeon 4y ago
    Except that right now simplified Chinese contents are dying on the open web due to the walled gardens these super apps built. There are also payment and some government services now must be done in these super apps in China.
- ElCheapo 4y ago
  Now go and see how many APIs Google Chrome has
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    All of those things I named are built by WeChat and live in the app, first-party: WeChat Pay, WeChat Moments, WeChat Channels, WeChat Out, etc. "You can technically visit any site you want" is really not an apt rebuttal to an app that contains a multitude of first-party features.
    - ElCheapo 4y ago
      WeChat is controlled by the government. They don't need an open ecosystem: if the government mandates an app then everyone will use that app. It's completely unnecessary to implement some kind of public facing API to offer the functionalities to supposed third parties. There are none.
helloworld97 4y ago

neodypsis 4y ago

There have been many attempts to replicate the "super app" phenomenon that is WeChat.

solarmist 4y ago
Wasn't Line the predecessor super app?
- mathverse 4y ago
  Not really. Line is a fork of Kakaotalk but now these two dont have much in common. Line is also quite successful in Thailand and Taiwan.
  - solarmist 4y ago
    Also Japan. But No, I mean the first widely used app that does all kinds of different things. Not literally a predecessor.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    LINE was a clone, not a fork. I'm not sure about timeline of superapps/in-app-apps though, I ... think mobage(moba-gay not mob-age) for i-mode phones, was one early example of a portal with messaging + apps. LINE replicated that with iOS apps, but more generic apps were only implemented in 2019. Either examples were rather simplistic games only. Bot-based text interfaces similar to various SMS self-serve systems existed for LINE, but I believe those were not offered as apps. WeChat might have been influenced by those predecessors, but as far as I can see, in-app mini-apps are understood to be a phenomenon originating in China and Southeast Asia, even in Japan. So it might be a stretch to call it a predecessor or pioneer in superapp, more like one of precursors.
    - lifthrasiir 4y ago
      I think you are pretty much right on all counts, probably except for the very definition of super-apps. I think the original article used the term for an app that can serve for multiple purposes, not necessarily open to 3rd parties. If we follow this definition Kakaotalk or LINE are definitely super apps, but WeChat can be considered as the second generation super app. (Third party apps in Kakaotalk or LINE are still pretty limited in this aspect to my knowledge. Kakaotalk in particular seems to have assimiliated any third-party interaction into its chatting platform.)

amadeuspagel 4y ago

A different theory: The ultimate super app is the browser. The browser is dominant in the west, because we started using the internet with desktop computers, where a website was the ultimate way to reach people. When mobile started, everyone had to have an app. Surfing the web on mobile at the beginning didn't work that well. At the same time installing apps was a lot easier then on desktop. In the west, the app model matches the website model. Most popular apps started as websites, later made an app - facebook, youtube ... In emerging markets, they "skipped" the desktop, started with a smartphone. Installing apps is still more of a hassle then visiting websites, so a super app makes more sense then a super website.

enos_feedler 4y ago
I agree with this theory somewhat. I also think the browser had the runway to become the ultimate open mobile super app, but dropped the ball. For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. A mobile browser today is mostly just tabs that view shrunk down web pages. I am still waiting for a true mobile first web experience. This might even require a new kind of web page format.
- dahdum 4y ago
  > For reasons we may never figure out, the browser never evolved beyond its initial incarnation. The reason is simple, the 30% app store profits. Very low incentives for either of the 2 major players to improve things, and tens of billions of reasons yearly to slow things down.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Exactly. Still, what happened to FirefoxOS?
    - rakoo 4y ago
      It was forked into KaiOS, targeting feature phones and allowing devs to use web technologies for building apps.

Dig1t 4y ago

My question is, how do super apps actually work? On iOS, does the WeChat app actually download an iOS app bundle and execute it? Or does it do something like a browser and execute some kind of markup + interpreted language like JavaScript? If it’s the former, I thought Apple banned apps in their App Store from doing that. Seems like maybe they made an exception for WeChat..? If so does that exception only exist within China or also in the US?

chazeon 4y ago
It’s the second case, markup + JS.
pxeger1 4y ago
Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store either, so I guess their ban is not very strict.
- ryan-c 4y ago
  > Apple don't ban web browsers from the App Store They do, in fact, ban web browsers other than Safari. I know what you're going to say - "Chrome is available for iOS". It's just Safari with a different UI. All the parsing, rendering and javascript runtime code is Safari.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    It's a complete fucking pain, too.
  - alwillis 4y ago
    Just to be clear, because apps aren’t allowed to run untrusted code (like random JavaScript in a JIT) via interpreter or compiler, any app that shows web content has to use WebKit-based APIs. And while WebKit is the HTML and JavaScript engine that Safari uses, browsers on iOS are quite different than Safari. I often use Brave because I like the UI and it blocks trackers etc. out of the box and certainly has features and UX that’s different than Safari’s. In my day to day usage, it makes zero difference that Safari and Brave use the same rendering engine on iOS.

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

Siri/Alexa are super-apps but with literally zero discoverability of features in their UX.

enos_feedler 4y ago
Siri is just an alternative front end to your phone's touch-based UI. So is iOS also a super app?
- oriolid 4y ago
  Or super apps are just a second launcher on top of the iOS or Android launcher, but the app selection is controlled by the super app's maintainer, not Apple or Google.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Xorg, the original super-app.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Siri is not, almost every request I give it results in a google search.

refurb 4y ago

I hate super apps. It made me appreciate the simple and clean UX of apps developed in the US and Europe. Nothing worse than opening up Shoppe or Grab and immediately being slammed with 3 dozen icons that you need to scroll through. Hell, even my banking app looked like that. Select "other requests" and I get to scroll through about 40 different icons for stuff to do. And they just offer banking. Apps like Grab offer banking, transport, food, digital wallet, etc. Seems super clunky to me, but what I've been told is the goal is for that app to do "everything" so you never need a different app.

lawgimenez 4y ago
Our family uses Grab app a lot and yes the dashboard is a mess. At one point Grab has games in it too.
- hestefisk 4y ago
  Grab also has / had a built-in messaging functionality. The UI is a sad mess.
unsupp0rted 4y ago
The other problem with super apps, at least where I am now, is a quarter of the functions don’t work, or work but break the viewport, or work but put the app into an unusable state until you hard reload it. The more functions there are, the more testing that needs to happen and doesn’t… “in emerging markets”.
hestefisk 4y ago
This is exactly what the DBS app is like as well.

mathverse 4y ago

Superapps are a deadend if you dont have a huge population like China that is comfortable with centralization.

seydor 4y ago
because there are fewer monopolies in the western internet?
- mathverse 4y ago
  Simply because westerners dont really want to trust one single corporation.
  - seydor 4y ago
    They don't? Apple and google exist
    - mathverse 4y ago
      That’s nowhere near what WeChat is for chinese people. Both Google and Apple can be totally ignored but you need WeChat for everyday life in China.
      - seydor 4y ago
        that s not what we re talking about though. There is no indication that people are not using Applepay and GooglePay because of trust concerns, it's because it is not available widely
      - foxhop 4y ago
        super app: "covid zero", red/green QR code app controls human movement in China.
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    yeah we prefer the illusion of 2-3 conglomerates

lukasb 4y ago

Great article. Was reading through thinking "okay so why aren't super apps popular in the west?" and lo and behold, they tackle that question brilliantly.

intrasight 4y ago

"super app": a browser within an "app" that knows who you are and knows how to move your money around.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

I've built startups both in the US and in an "emerging market", so I'll offer some of my own answers here. 1. Consumers are less tech-savvy, so having a single app as a starting point makes everything far easier than having to install many apps. 2. Brand is much more valuable. In emerging markets, with (overall) less regulation (and self-regulation) of markets, trust and brand carries a LOT of weight. If I trust company X with my payments, I'm also more likely to trust them with my transportation, my food delivery, etc (than having to verify/trust a new party). Having a trusted brand makes it very easy to expand into new verticals. 3. Regulatory clout. Once you have the scale (or political connections) to navigate regulation in one vertical, it's much easier to apply that to new verticals. You might "know the right people", know how to navigate the bureaucracy better... or in some cases, it's just easier for the government to trust you with a license than someone who's unknown to them. 4. Talent is more sparse, so clustering it in one place tends to make things more efficient. 5. Funding might be hard to come by, but existing companies either already have the cash or have connections to investors. Overall, these things in combination just make it a lot easier for an existing company to launch a new vertical than for an upstart to do so. With time and as markets evolve, you'd probably expect more specialization to occur, but by then the super apps may already be entrenched enough to defend themselves. For similar reasons, family-owned conglomerates tend to be very successful in emerging markets and span across a variety of unrelated industries. You just bought a place in a housing development built by a company owned by wealthy family X, then you go to the supermarket to buy some milk but you're not sure which brand to trust... Then you see the carton manufactured by another company from family X.

brightball 4y ago
In the US the “super app” was probably AOL.
- GordonS 4y ago
  And perhaps Compuserve for the UK and Europe. Ah, makes me feel nostalgic, I loved Compuserve!
- signal11 4y ago

hulitu 4y ago

> When users shook their phones in a specific way, they’d be connected to others on the Weixin network who had shaken Compare that with Whatsapp which want access to your phone number and contacts.

djbusby 4y ago
This feature was in Bump in 2008.

ak217 4y ago

This article is trying to explain the rise of super-apps in China through the lens of user experience, but I think a more likely explanation is government regulation and platform moderation. In Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to forbid apps from doing too many different things at once, so as to preserve their platform advantage. Also, in Western markets, companies that develop apps are wary of developing super-apps because they anticipate exponentially more attention from regulators the more things their app does. In China, Apple was worried they'd be shut out of the market so they ceded some control over the platform by allowing super-apps; Google never had much control over their platform; and regulators are more concerned with protectionism than preventing abuse.

pcl 4y ago
> In Western markets, Apple and Google use app moderation to forbid apps from doing too many different things at once, so as to preserve their platform advantage. I’ve never heard about this before. Is this an official policy of either company? Do you have any citations to share for more reading?
- digitaLandscape 4y ago
- noahmasur 4y ago
  I've mostly seen this for game platforms on iOS: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-let-the-steam-link-app-on-the-ios/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/05/valve-apple-wont-let-... I think it's waffled back and forth on game streaming: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gaming-microsoft-xcloud-google-stadia-ios-app-store-guidelines-violations https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gamin... https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-xbox-xcloud-streaming-exclusives-iphone-ipad-gamepas https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22826297/microsoft-xbox-x... Netflix also has to offer their games as separate packages: https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-reportedly-only-be-available-to-download-individually-on-ios https://www.whathifi.com/news/netflix-games-will-reportedly-...

seydor 4y ago

because other apps are too complicated , too greedy, full of popups, and other 'cool things' that techies consider de rigueur these days. Command line interfaces are always the best

itake 4y ago

My day job just built a WhatsApp bot to interact with customers because our super app was too big for low-end devices. Meta also subsidizes internet for WhatsApp in developing countries, so they don't have to only use the service on wifi.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

I kinda hate how the "across emerging markets" superapps are just the last paragraph and the 98% of the article is about wechat which everyone already knows about. How are those superapps doing in other markets? That would be interesting information.

vinibrito 4y ago
Here in Brazil they are not as powerful as WeChat is in China, but they are aggressively growing and pushing the market. But they are largely a business push force, not a market pull force.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Can’t think of any super apps that are doing well in India, and that’s a huge market. Our most popular messaging app is Whatsapp that only does messaging. Our most popular payments app is Google Pay that only does payments.
- toast0 4y ago
  India likes its protectionism. You're not going to get a superapp from outside. Maybe Jio would do one?
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    Even JIO has several separate apps for everything. It even separates Cinema from TV for some reason
    - stoicjumbotron 4y ago
      Agreed and I never understood why. Apart from the benefit of pushing updates individually to each separate apps, what is the use case of such "bifurcation"?
      - cuteboy19 4y ago

ryandrake 4y ago

The article (and the embedded NYT video) seem to imply that WeChat is not just a dominant app, but is pretty much the only way to do things in China. For example the quote, "try and pay with cash for lunch, and you’ll look like a luddite." So, what if you cannot use WeChat? Or if you're banned by their AI (which happens all the time with western apps)? Or if you simply choose not to? There must be other ways to book rides, hire services, pay people, chat, E-mail, and so on.. I (in the West) opt out of using Facebook+all FB properties, Twitter, Google, and so on, and I still have the full ability to live as a normal person. Surely China has cash and the ability to book things over the phone...?

nomay 4y ago
COVID measures made WeChat a must have for anyone except toddlers, since you need to show your green COVID qr code to enter public spaces, and almost any Chinese had done one if not daily obligatory mass testing, in which various WeChat applets are required. You can live perfectly fine without it before, buy you simply can't legally live in China without a working, updated and ready-to-open WeChat now, since last year. The CCP also did their whole national census on a WeChat applet, it's the defacto governing tool.

3qz 4y ago

> Every aspect of a typical Chinese person’s life, not just online but also off is conducted through [this] single app Every aspect of a typical Chinese person’s life, not just online but also off is conducted through [this] single app What happens to people that get banned from WeChat?

jon-wood 4y ago
I suspect life gets very difficult. When visiting a supplier in China a few years ago I tried to buy a coffee from the place downstairs and eventually had to get someone from the supplier to do so because they had no method of ordering and paying other than a WeChat app, and as someone without a Chinese bank account I was unable to pay for anything via WeChat.
- White_Wolf 4y ago
  I had to go to China for 1 week+ for work and was in the same boat. Found a few places that only take WeChat but I ask someone around to pay for me and give them cash. More often than not it would be the person at the register. People are quite helpful if you ask nicely.
yep31 4y ago
What happens to web developers that get banned from the internet?
nomay 4y ago
You are shut out, and with the latest CCP censorship measures you are forbidden to creat accounts "web-wide". So I guess you should just keep your mouth shut other than harmonious online activities to avoid that doomsday situation, like me, I never use WeChat or Weibo to do anything other than keeping in basic touch, since you don't know which mundane word would become sensitive, trigger the censors and get you banned, there's no appeal.
- White_Wolf 4y ago
  I keep a fb account exactly for the same reason. Keeping in touch with friends and family from all over. I'd never post anything because you never know what random s..t gets you banned for life next year.

aunty_helen 4y ago

Rappi. Massive app in Latin America. The level of usefulness and convenience is astounding. I ordered some items I forgot to get at the supermarket the other day, arrived in 4 minutes. In my home first world country, next day delivery is touted as a massive success by execs on linkedin. For how powerful Rappi has become, not only did they beat Uber Eats completely out of Colombia (their service just isn't at the same standard anywhere), but they also beat McDonalds who tried to go exclusive with their own app for a year before coming back to the platform.

axg11 4y ago
Uber Eats has to build a model that works worldwide, including in the US, Canada, UK, EU, etc. where unemployment rates are relatively low. I don’t think same hour delivery will ever be long-term sustainable in a country with low unemployment. Emerging economies are a different story. Unemployment is usually high so there’s an abundance of workers to power the logistics behind these super apps.
- jorvi 4y ago
  > I don’t think same hour delivery will ever be long-term sustainable in a country with low unemployment. In Europe we have something called ‘flash orders’, where your groceries are usually delivered within 10 minutes. Way crazier than same-day. Like you said, it does make one wonder if those companies (Gorillas, Flink, Getir) will ever be sustainable long term.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    Yeah, these have been around in Asia for years now. The European ones are heavily restricted in items and jack up prices, to make it even remotely profitable. In India, you can order literally anything - it’s pretty cool. Checkout Dunzo or Grofers. The former even acts as a local courier or task runner.
    - jorvi 4y ago
      Oh I am aware, from Indonesia where they have Gojek. Here in the West I just see it have the same trajectory as Uber. Investors pump in massive amounts of money which allows the service to be sold at a loss, then investors realize they’re not gonna have unicorn returns, at which point the companies jack their rates. And whereas Uber is still a better alternative to what it replaced (the fucked up taxi industry), flash order companies don’t really have that same “I’d rather still use them” boon.

xcambar 4y ago

I've missed a career opportunity to lead a super app for the Indian market. I truly regret it of course but I'm thankful at least for the truly enlightening conversations I've had the luck to have, with people having large scale jobsian visions and the means to achieve them. It reinforced my appreciation for hiring processes, when one can be lucky enough to meet true leaders with exceptional visions.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
Are super apps actually working in the Indian market? I know Paytm has tried so hard but its not really gained much traction outside of payments.
- Sateeshm 4y ago
  It's not even the go-to for payments. Plenty of competition from gpay,phonepe, etc.
mannymanman 4y ago
Why did you not take that offer?
- xcambar 4y ago
  The offer did not take me, to be accurate :D
  - mannymanman 4y ago
    Next time!

meltyness 4y ago

It'll be fine as long as they write and maintain perfectly secure software and infrastructure, and stay competitively up to date and performant.

vishnugupta 4y ago

I worked on two super apps for a good part of the last decade; one in India and one in South East Asia so here's my take based on those experience. As the article points out, most of the are trying to apply the playbook of WeChat. IMO it succeeded because they built an enormous user base which has a terrific daily engagement. Once daily engagement is cracked it becomes not all that hard (but not trivial) to add more use cases. P2P payments, file sharing, and you name it. However, in India and SEA the companies tried to go the other way. To take Indian example, most of the fintechs in their quest to increase engagement began adding chat. However, by then people had adopted to WA so it miserably failed. But they still kept at it and added more fintech related use cases; to take PayTM as an example one could do just about anything around payments with that. Insurance, toll payments, utility payment, pay to merchant, pay off EMIs, investments and what not. So they did achieve decent daily engagement. Grab has been trying to do the same. Going from Taxi app to a generic payments app. It's all about engagement. It's an enormous investment though. Not only about rolling out features but also to build two sided market places (example; merchant payment requires onboarding merchants too), onboarding utilities etc., However the profit from them are minuscule despite good utilisation because the recipient of the payment (like merchant, or utility providers) isn't going to give away their share of money. So, in the end all the fintechs resort to lending which is the biggest chunk of profit generator. It's a shame that the article doesn't mention it.

Ayesh 4y ago
I have worked with one company that competes with Grab in Indonesia, and like you said, it's about daily engagement even at the cost of losing money in some fronts. Food delivery and ride sharing are not that profitable considering the massive amount of logistics it takes, but wallet payments and the rest of that ecosystem can easily set off that loss.
majani 4y ago
This is what should have been Facebook's next big bet for this coming decade: to make WhatsApp into the superapp to end all superapps.
- 4y ago

miki123211 4y ago

The truth is, traditional, western mobile apps really suck, and create a lot of friction. Some of that friction only exists to maintain Apple's and Google's competitive advantages (think web browsers being overly limited), but a large part of it exists because we choose privacy over user convenience. As I understand it, weChat mini apps have the ability to reliably identify their users and keep their data across multiple devices, with no accounts and no user interaction. Imagine opening an app for recipes, adding a recipe and knowing that it's always going to be there, no matter the device, with no signing up, no figuring out a password, no complicated login screens, nothing. You open an app and it just works. Same thing extends to payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay aren't terribly popular with users as they require extra steps to set up, and in app purchases have ridiculous fees and can't be used for goods sold outside the app. The only western system that ever came close was probably Minitel[1], which was just too outdated technologically to survive the age of the modern internet. iCloud would also be a competitor if it worked cross platform. [1] https://afridigest.com/super-apps-in-emerging-markets/ https://afridigest.com/super-apps-in-emerging-markets/

baby 4y ago
> weChat mini apps I always said that Facebook can innovate in different ways: 1. use their already existing social graph to produce OTHER apps that are useful 2. use their tool with a new social graph Number 2 has been done once I believe. It's called workplace. Number 1 is what Wechat is doing on steroids, and Facebook has done almost none of that. It's insane that they're not taking advantage of this and are just adding noise to the useful tool that facebook used to be.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- greenonions 4y ago
  You're forgetting that Facebook can see the future and everyone is wearing helmets and gloves and living in a digital world that looks like a mobile game from 2008.

beorno 4y ago

My take after 20+ years in China living with WeChat and Alipay: 1) Green field: no or few incumbents or legacy platforms or regulatory capture to deal with - infrastructure in the West is antiquated and fossilized in comparison. 2) Open to change: People and businesses are living in a world that's extremely cut-throat and dynamic, and so they expect change, and are willing to try new things - the West is more conservative in comparison (e.g., the proliferation of QR code use cases seamlessly bridging offline/online that never took off in the West except when force by CVOID). 3) Free pass from platforms: Due to "be nice to China" Apple has turn a blind eye towards WeChat and Alipay running an app store inside of an app (which has always been against their regulations, and which MANY companies would like to do). 4) Hard work and (used to be) cheaper labor: 996 super-hard work ethic means they churn out features and blitz scale really well - they're just more aggressive. 5) In touch with the offline world: Companies in China have to deal with the reality of an extreme variety of users, from cities to countryside, from young to old, from rich to poor. They often build out big sales and support orgs of people walking around from store to store, across the country, whereas I think many startups in the West (often due to cost reasons) tend to do almost everything online. And increasingly: 6) Government support. WeChat is pretty much the ERP system of China today. You can do everything through/on it. In some ways it's a utility. I guess every country could benefit enormously in terms of control and efficiency by having an platform that provides authentication, authorization, and payments as a base layer for all other apps. The government puts people / teams / divisions inside of organizations to ensure things are "running smoothly", but this works best if they have a few big companies to deal with - not a myriad of small startups. WeChat and Alipay are becoming more and more nationalized, and are already "too big to fail". I miss not having WeChat in the West, though I'd of course wish it was done in a less 1984-ish way. Life has ballooned in complexity, and bureaucracy has gotten out of hand in the West... We need a radical streamlining in order to regain back our productivity (and not waste time filling out checks, waiting in line, calling/faxing, filling out forms, etc). Super apps, if done well like in WeChat's case, can offer that . (I grew up in Europe, spent 20 years in China, and now living in North America.)

jhatemyjob 4y ago
It's just (3). Apple doesn't allow them outside of China, so they only work in China. That's all there is to it.

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago

China presence is significant in emerging markets

immigrantheart 4y ago

Seems the usual HN crowds that are worried of centralization and monopoly praising these super apps. What am I missing?

BiometricAndy 4y ago

godmode2019 4y ago

Hot take: western apps stole the super app concept from Chinese companies specifically wechat. Hot take2: The proliferation of video and streaming was driven by the Chinese. Who's language is much harder to type on a phone, their app stores this media was exploding and western apps started to copy without really knowing why it was popular.

aembleton 4y ago
Which western apps stole the super app concept?

markdown 4y ago

> emerging markets Is that all we are to you?

stuntkite 4y ago

lokokokonut 4y ago

jwithington 4y ago

WeChat was built in 2-3 months, approved by an email that just read it: “Do it now.” cc: Patrick C. to add it to that fast project list

MR4D 4y ago

So, AOL but for apps. Looks like we got the future before others - clearly it is not evenly distributed.