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I don't like to use insults around mental health, or I totally would ;) Musk wants to build an "everything app" where people conduct business and accept payment
by danShumway 3y ago
I don't like to use insults around mental health, or I totally would ;) Musk wants to build an "everything app" where people conduct business and accept payments. And he's shown over the past weekend that he is fully willing on impulse to literally just stop everyone from using the website.
So who on earth would be irresponsible enough to trust Twitter with anything essential or important after this? Who is going to build a storefront on a platform where they might wake up one day and find out that all of their customers are rate-limited from using the platform? And then the CEO jokes that he's doing people a favor by making them touch grass?
A bunch of artists who had (shortsightedly) built their business models around using Twitter as an art platform woke up one day to find out that their artwork can no longer be embedded in other websites. A bunch of government agencies and public services just found out that "check our Twitter for updates" no longer works. With no warning and with no announcement, all because Elon is mad that OpenAI hasn't cut him a check.
That is a business-destroying decision. Other executives are afraid of doing this because it's the kind of thing that permanently hinders your platform from ever being treated like a reliable place to do business or build on top of. It puts a mark on your businesses reputation that will never go away. And it's not a tech issue, it's a trust issue. Finish the big work and make something exciting, sure, but nobody with an ounce of sense would ever trust Elon not to pull the rug out from under them now.
You're going to build a business on a platform that might randomly decide to effectively shut itself down on a whim? Imagine if you had an Amazon shop and Amazon decided tomorrow with no warning that every customer on the platform is limited to buying at most one item per day, and also external links to Amazon no longer work for guest checkout unless your customer makes an account. How are people defending this? It makes no sense.
- astrange 3y ago> Musk wants to build an "everything app" where people conduct business and accept payments. Which is a bad idea. China has everything apps like WeChat because monopolies are easier to regulate, but customers don't actually like them, which is why we don't have them elsewhere.
- Sai_ 3y agoIndia has payment apps which are going the way of super apps by allowing you to 1. Make p2p payments 2. Pay utility bills 3. Pay credit card charges 4. Buy insurance 5. Get loans 6. Make charitable donations 7. Book travel tickets 8. Find nearby stores, store timings, get directions, and see their ratings 9. Send and receive short messages Unless “we” and “elsewhere” doesn’t include India, I’d say superapps are more common than you think.
- madeofpalk 3y agoMaybe I don't know what an 'everything' app is, but this just sounds like a banking app to me (with the exception of the last 'feature').
- Sai_ 3y agoWhen the App Store was launched, most apps had a single backend they connected to. I’m thinking of say the FB app or the Google maps app which only talked to Fb and Google respectively. These payment apps integrate with a much wider arrays of backends from multiple providers and allow you perform many more unique use cases. E.g., making charitable donations and paying an insurance premium are unrelated but the Indian payment app I’m thinking of enables it. This brings it closer to being an “everything” app.
- flexagoon 3y agoWe also have banking superapps in Russia - and even more. I still wouldn't say that's an "everything app", all of those features are related to payments and they can be in a banking app.
- Sateeshm 3y agoPayTM? Just because an app has all these features doesn't mean people actually use all the features.