Social media is reaching a turning point in internet history. Social media platforms are trying to improve user experiences as consumer choices for online engagement and community grow.
The Gist
- Pivotal juncture. Social media platforms face challenges in maintaining user engagement and exploring superapp possibilities.
- Superapp potential. Twitter, with Elon Musk’s influence, is considered the closest Western platform to achieving a superapp structure.
- Regulatory hurdles. The rise of superapps in the West may face challenges, such as whether acoommodating regulations will be in place when they emerge.
A Superapp?
We must first comprehend superapp fundamentals to appreciate superapp approach. A superapp is a multipurpose app that offers music streaming and payment choices. Such apps help users save time and avoid moving between programs.
Social media is largely for communication. Each user has a profile and can share posts on a central feed alongside other information, ads, and videos. Twitter and Instagram have different layouts, but the goal is casual communication. Followers can also interact with brands. Twitter and Instagram are mostly about reading and commenting on others’ posts. Users can buy by clicking on a post or video and completing the transaction on an external site, generally the brand’s.
Superapps focus on transactions for a major service. The app’s initial offering is eventually expanded. To enhance its main product, the platform’s algorithm proposes a variety of verified, additional services. A superapp gives smartphone users a personalized commerce experience by emphasizing in-app transactions rather than streams and postings that lead to external websites and apps.
Superapps’ Past
After superapps became popular in Asia, business leaders wanted a marketplace. WeChat, Paytm, and Grab are examples. These apps recommend products better than social media streams filled with ads and unrelated discussion.
Social media trends are shifting toward superapps. Social media sites have fought for consumers and advertisers for years. Technology journalist Alex Kantowitz predicted a single winner owing to feature consistency. Social media platforms are struggling to keep their audiences and attention because features from one platform often appear on another.
Rich Twitter Data Is Hard to Replace
Twitter is the closest Western platform to superapp structure. Elon Musk wanted a superapp, which influenced his Twitter acquisition. Musk told multiple sites that in-app commerce can value Twitter at 10 times its current value.
Twitter has been used for many non-commercial purposes. Twitter’s data, which includes journalists, celebrities, politicians, and technologists, has long fascinated researchers. Interest groups and individuals use Twitter to support one other, share information via hashtags, and organize discussions in Twitter Chats and, more recently, Twitter Spaces. Twitter amplified social movements like Black Lives Matter and workplace sexual harassment.
Twitter’s company. Social networking companies have struggled to generate an influential in-app commerce environment for a super app framework, despite efforts to improve consumer commerce possibilities.