I come not to praise the super app. But to bury it.

The first gen Chinese tech companies went with being user centric route since they had such greenfields in front of them.

Everything was offline and vaguely dated. There was the real opportunity to leapfrog. 🧵
2) It was easier and cheaper to sell additional services to an existing user.

So food delivery apps went into hotel and flight booking. Podcasting apps went into e-commerce. Every app started having mini-games to keep the user’s attention.
3) Though the fact that every consumer app thought this way meant that every consumer app was a super app.

Pretty soon, consumers were being sold financial products from their podcast platforms, bike rentals and food delivery apps.

This got tiring v quickly.
4) The current generation of consumer apps are coming into a very saturated market.

The key trends have been to focus on simplicity, AI curation, interactivity enabled social and younger users
5) TikTok and Xiaoyuzhou are good examples of this.

Both relies not on extensive features to keep the user, but high personalisation through AI curation and interactivity enabled social - where discussion and community happens around their content
6) the super app has achieved market saturation. Long live the super app.

I give more visual examples in this week’s edition

lillianli.substack.com/p/readers-ques…

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More from @lillianmli

25 Oct
1) Epic speech by Jack Ma before the IPO of Ant Groups, who started with 'I'm retired so..yolo'

He touches upon the outdateness of current financial systems (Basel III) for the future, the role of regulation and cryptocurrency.

A condensed translation:
2) China's financial system development used to follow that of Europe and the US, with the thinking that we needed to catch-up. But just because it's European or American, doesn't mean these financial systems are still relevant. We need to create the systems of the future.
3) Basel III is focused on risk management and not on growth and innovation. It's not designed for the younger generation or developing countries. We can also see how Basel III has affected Europe's development. It's a set of rules for the geriatric club.
Read 20 tweets
24 Oct
Strong disagree.

My fellow oxbridge students had a strong sense of curiosity which they pursue for its own sake.

My Ivy League co-workers’s general knowledge purely came from course reading.

Oxbridge encourage intellectual curiosity

Ivy League encourages conscientiousness
The test schedule for Ivy League are like 6 times a year?

You know much I got tested at Cambridge? 1 time per year per course. Done during a week.

Also my first two years’ test results didn’t influence my final year graduation mark.

This meant a lot of time for exploration
I feel like everyone who when to Ivys tested very well throughout high school and then had to continuously test well throughout to get a good GPA to graduate.

This is a fantastic way to get diligent workers who are trained to constantly work.
Read 6 tweets
23 Oct
Seems like a tie between 1984, Rationalist circling and LGBTQ rights discussion.

The answer is.. Rationalist Circling.

Thread for proof 👇
LGTBQ rights is a getting a lot of traction in the younger generation.

Quick search for Bilibili reveals the following results, all with 100K+ of views.

Also breaking into the mainstream with Alibaba running this supporting ad over lunar new year. scmp.com/news/china/soc… ImageImage
1984 is readily available, both in book stores and on Tmall. Image
Read 4 tweets

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