What is ‘everything app’ and why Elon Musk is super excited about it?

Elon Musk revealed a few days earlier that the reason behind reviving the $44 billion Twitter deal is to make the microblogging site an “everything app”.

“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he had tweeted on Tuesday.

Musk wants Twitter to perform as Chinese apps like WeChat which can be used for digital transactions, booking a cab and other financial services.But hedidn’t say what kind of other services Twitter might be offering in the future once he takes over.

Nonetheless, the announcement created a buzz on social media, with many discussing as to what an ‘everything app’ entails.

What is ‘everything app’

The concept of an everything app, often referred to as a “super app,” is novel in the US, whereas in Asia, it is massively popular, and tech companies across the world have tried to emulate it.

A super app has been described as a platform that can offer various services under one umbrella, leading many to term it as the Swiss army knife of apps, which can offer a range of component tools (mini-apps) that the user can use and remove as needed.

Where did the concept originate?

China and Southeast Asia have been sort of a pivot in churning out these ‘super apps’

WeChat, GoJek, and Grab are some that leveraged the opportunity of customer traffic on their platforms that originally came for social media and communication by offering additional services leading to increased revenue realisations.

In India, the Tata Group is planning to come upwith its own super app.

Reliance Industries, under its Jio umbrella, is amalgamating its various services such as shopping, content streaming, groceries, payments, cloud services, etc.

Whereas, Paytm, which initially started out as a digital payments company, has been offering other services like ticket bookings, games, online shopping, banking, consumer finance, etc.

India’s homegrown Flipkart Group has tied up its payments app PhonePe with companies such as Ola Cabs, Swiggy, Grofers, AJio, Decathlon,DelhiMetro, booking.com, etc to offer these services from within its own app.

Have other US tech firms tried this?

Snap Inc-owned Snapchat earlier introduced peer-to-peer payments called Snapcash, but ended the feature in 2018.

It also made a push into mobile gaming and recently ended that venture as part of cost-cutting plans.

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