This December marks the 20th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s original text positioned the fate of the world in the One Ring, a creation imbued with infinite power that could destroy the world. It’s up to Frodo, a kind soul who seems impervious to its corrupting allure, to not save the Ring, but to destroy it. There’s a simple but effective takeaway: immense power must be treated with caution, and the world would sometimes rather it be destroyed than harnessed.
Metaverse
In The Social Network, the (fictionalized) Sean Parker announces: “We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet!” At the time, this was a mundane and idealistic proclamation, a lark borne of ego and cocaine. But sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Earlier this year, Facebook changed its name to Meta and pivoted strategies. And Zuckerberg staked the future of his once idyllic social media company in the metaverse, a maximalist simulacrum of reality that would indeed, finally allow us to live our lives on the internet. I believe the expression you’re looking for is:
Beyond Zuckerberg’s um… ambitious plans, Meta’s goal seems to become the One Ring. When you think about a logical endpoint to Zuckerberg’s ascension to world domination - first starting as a media platform connecting literally billions of people around the world - this seems wholly inevitable. He’s already gained control over the humans in farms and in cities, why not gain control over our lives in the digital world?
Digital Corpus
The end goal of the perfect super-app is total, absolute control of its users. It is to build a digital corpus of the person and penetrate all aspects of its existence. If this sounds grossly intimidating or eerily intrusive, follow your gut.
The last frontier of tech is the human attention span. Every second we spend on one app is time not spent on another. Tech giants are seeking to capture as much of our time as possible, and content is the gateway. Apple has launched Apple TV+; Amazon has bundled Prime Video into its logistics business; Square has acquired Tidal; AT&T has WarnerMedia and HBO; even JP Morgan acquired a restaurant review and rating website. At first glance, none of these content divisions seem to relate to the parent company’s core business; but when zoomed out to the super-app level, the larger strategy takes shape. And it looks a lot like eyeballs staring at screens controlled by tech firms.
My cousins all live in China. Despite the government’s crackdown on Western apps like Instagram and Google, the nation’s (and indeed, likely the world’s) most used app is WeChat, a super-app that links social, search, payments, banking, even ride hailing. The app literally controls their everyday life. My cousins don’t even carry a wallet in public anymore; all of their pertinent information is contained in WeChat. Their iPhone quite literally has become singular with their person.
But rest assured, America is not far behind this super-app craze. Meta’s rollout might have been the butt of many jokes, but don’t mistake its tone deafness for lack of intent or ability. Apple, Amazon, and Google aren’t far behind, having linked credit information, health tracking, face scanning, voice detection, and original content to keep your time, money, bodies, and eyeballs glued to their products. When the product is this sticky, do you even have a choice to go elsewhere?
The one counteracting force to this super-app rollup is the FTC and DOJ’s appetite for filing anti-trust lawsuits against tech firms. Recently, the US government has sharpened their pencils against the giants: Google, Meta, Apple. In the face of overwhelming power, the FTC and DOJ are our Frodo and Sam, seeking to rid the world of the Ring’s corruption.
Tweet This
Recently, Jack Dorsey, part-time CEO of Twitter, announced he would be stepping down (read: fired). This news alone made big waves. Twitter has been sorely disappointing since its IPO in 2013, its stock generating zero returns:
In comparison, Google has generated over 5,000% return since its IPO; Apple generated over 170,000% return since its IPO; and Meta generated nearly 800% return since its IPO. One of these things is not like the others.
However, Dorsey leaving Twitter masked a larger force at play in the super-app economy. Splitting his time as CEO at both Twitter and Square, Dorsey attributed over 90% of his net worth to Square. Square’s performance since its IPO?
It’s a shocking concept - a billionaire focusing his time and effort on the company that makes him rich and neglecting the ugly stepchild? Not long after his resignation as Twitter CEO, Dorsey announced a name change of his own: Square would become Block. In part, the name change is to appropriately capture the company’s new overall strategy to capture the breadth of its product offerings to customers. The arms race towards the next super-app is underway, and Block now has a full-time CEO at the helm. Somewhere, Zuckerberg is shaking in his boots.
The great irony to Dorsey’s newfound focus on Block is that as a fintech platform, it has installed anchors across payment, crypto, and streaming content divisions. Its already build a network of transactional data points, and is penetrating into ever-expanding vertices. The one glaring gap in its march to universal domination? Social media. And one particular social media platform just lost its CEO, has remained undervalued for nearly a decade, and increasingly looks ripe for acquisition.
Dusting off my Twitter handle,
A