The "everything app" already exists

· 5 min read

internet culturesocial mediagenerative ai

I was recently listening to an episode of The Vergecast that discussed Disney+‘s aspiration to become an “everything app” for the company’s theme parks, merchandise, movies, shows, and a new feed of scrolling short-form content à la TikTok. Disney is far from the first company to try the concept of an “everything app”. Most notably, Elon Musk claimed that Twitter was going to become an everything app when he first acquired it and renamed it to X - something that receives ridicule to this day. The idea that people will want to use a single app for every single aspect of their life, or even every single interaction they have with a company as large as Disney, is simply incorrect. However, I think that this idealistic “everything app” that corporations want to create already exists, and has snuck in under their very noses.

Users want purpose-specific products

There has been a recent cultural shift over the last year or so towards younger people picking up old compact cameras (most popularly the Canon PowerShot line of point-and-shoots). While this is largely a sign of a shift away from hyper-processed HDR photos that come out of our smartphones, I’d argue it’s also a sign that people still want products made for a specific purpose. There’s a certain allure to using a tool that’s specifically designed for the task you’re doing, even if there is something that might be more practical and overreaching that can do the same thing. While a lot of this is about the tactile feeling we get from using purpose-specific tools, a lot of it is psychological. Take, for example, the recent popularity1 of the Letterboxd social movie review platform. A social platform specifically designed for movie reviews isn’t strictly necessary. You could write movie reviews and post them on a microblogging platform like Twitter2 or Tumblr - both of which already have existing communities of cinephiles. But there’s something that feels very comfortable and nice about having a platform built just for this niche.

Aside from the psychological aspect, there’s a practical issue: the level of polish and attention needed to create a truly great product in so many different areas (communication, commerce, content production and consumption, etc.) doesn’t often come from one company’s efforts. A small team isn’t going to create a messaging feature that’s as well thought-out as a company whose entire goal is to create a great messaging app. Even the largest companies struggle with this, like Google who still can’t seem to get messaging right after so many tries.

Every product (will be) a chat box

The most common usage of the “everything app” terminology was during 20223 when Elon Musk acquired Twitter and began stating its lofty goals of handling banking, private and public communication, and media consumption all in one app. The term has mostly faded away, especially as Musk has become a more and more divisive personality and Twitter’s relevance has gone down significantly. However, the idea still very much exists in Silicon Valley - just in a different form.

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, every major player in the generative AI space has been claiming that the future of human interaction with technology looks like typing what you want into a chat box, and an LLM either giving you information or dispatching agents to perform tasks and report back to you. This is the polar opposite of what the current generation wants in their technology. Tactile, purpose-built solutions are where Gen Z’s focus lies, and that will become more financially significant to how Big Tech operates as Gen Z shifts into being the highest spending generation.

Wait, it already exists?

Regardless of whether or not I disagree with the premise of an everything app, I think that the things that companies like X are trying to do have actually already been done in modern social media platforms. TikTok was the first in the game, with video and photo content, public and private communication (comment sections and direct messages), and even a commerce component (the TikTok Shop). Meta’s platforms followed suit, with both Facebook and Instagram fulfilling the same checklist. You can watch a short or long-form video, send it to a friend and start a conversation, follow a creator, and buy a product all without leaving the Instagram or Facebook apps.

Why then, if these platforms already exist, do most people have other apps for shopping or for communication? There isn’t one single reason. It could be a privacy issue - most people don’t want Meta or TikTok having access to every single one of their transactions or primary communication. It could be a platform issue - not everyone has TikTok and so it’s not reliable enough to count on as a primary messaging app. I think, though, that a significant component is the fact that they lack the psychological draw of purpose-specific apps. You can take photos in the Instagram app, but unless you’re planning on posting that photo you’re probably going to take it in your phone’s camera app instead (or, if you have an Android phone, you’re probably using your camera app regardless4). You can buy products on the TikTok Shop, but in most cases you’re probably going to stick to Amazon.

So in conclusion, I don’t think it’s in Disney or X or any other company’s interest to build an everything app. It’s significantly more important to just focus on making every app that someone needs to download be a great experience. People want to use purpose-built products that have real people behind them - products built with care to solve specific problems that users have, in a way that feels natural and intentional.

Footnotes

  1. Letterboxd has over 30 million users as of July 2026 - nearly twice as many as in 2025. ↩

  2. I don’t think I can ever unironically refer to the platform renamed X as such. It’s just confusing and unnatural. I usually say “Twitter” to refer to the platform and sometimes “X” to refer to the current company. ↩

  3. Per Google Trends. ↩

  4. Android phones have historically had issues with the built-in Instagram camera not benefiting from platform-owned photo processing, leading to significantly worse quality than iOS devices had. This is reportedly changing as of Android 17. ↩