Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith

Storyteller, Content and other

Forums

Why haven't SuperApps conquered the US Yet?

Despite their immense popularity in China, SuperApps (multifunctional platforms that combine services like messaging, payments, shopping, and more into a single app) have yet to gain significant traction in the United States. This discrepancy raises intriguing questions about cultural differences, technological infrastructure, and consumer behavior.

One key factor is the fragmented nature of the United States' financial and tech ecosystem. Unlike China, where Alipay and WeChat Pay dominate the market due to a unified financial system and government support, the US has a diverse array of payment gateways, banks, and fintech solutions. Integrating these into a single SuperApp is not only logistically challenging but also requires navigating complex regulatory landscapes.

Moreover, american consumers have grown accustomed to niche apps tailored for specific tasks: such as Venmo for peer-to-peer payments or Paypal for digital purchases.
The US market has also been slower to adopt all-in-one platforms, reflecting a cultural preference for specialized solutions over overarching ones.

What I Learned Relaunching My App on Product Hunt After 3 Years

First of all, I want to thank you for voting for us in yesterday's launch - you still can, the week is not over. HERE

Second thing, I summarised some things that I realised, reflected on, and maybe should have known sooner:

⚡ 6 New Problems to Build a Startup | ProblemHunt

  1. Need an AI Jarvis that turns chaotic voice/text updates into automatically structured tasks, projects, and dashboards for managing all of life and work.

  2. Hours of manual searching for parts for Chinese cars. Need an AI agent that understands queries from photos or text and finds the part.

  3. Online clothes shopping is a lottery. There's no accessible technology to see how an item will fit your body, especially in small stores. It's a pain for the buyer and a loss for the seller.

  4. A musician from Lebanon cannot sell his music: streaming pays pennies, and Bandcamp doesn't accept payments in his country. Needs a fair radio-platform with direct sales.

  5. VPN users have nowhere to find out if a service will work reliably on their network there is no up-to-date rating based on real-time quality monitoring.

  6. It's impossible to order truly fresh farm vegetables and bread through delivery aggregators product quality is low, and you have to go to the market yourself.

It’s not where you work, It’s how you work.

Whether you work remotely or on-site, and who you work with, may not be the most important thing.
What really matters is how you handle the situation.

Personally, I find myself quite flexible with both on-site and remote work.
But as an introvert who isn t very strong at communication, I usually prefer working alone rather than in crowded environments and I tend to be more productive that way.

That said, I also realize that a lack of real human interaction can indirectly affect both the process and the final outcome of work.

Twitterp/twitterNika

17d ago

X tries to attract more publishers and offer $1M for the best January article

Today I read in the news that X is offering a $1 million prize to the author of the most popular long-form X Article published by January 30, 2026, as part of its push to grow long-form content on the platform.

Eligible articles must be original, at least 1,000 words, and winners will be judged mainly on Verified Home Timeline impressions. Only U.S.-based X Premium subscribers can participate.