A Decade after WeChat a Marketer Touts OpenAI as the Everything App
June 10, 2025
Just a dinobaby and no AI: How horrible an approach?
Lester thinks OpenAI will become the Internet. Okay, Lester, are you on the everything app bandwagon. That buggy rolled in China and became one of the little engines that could for social scoring? “How ChatGPT Could Replace the Internet As We Know It” provides quite a bit about Lester. Zipping past the winner prose, I noted this passage:
In fact, according to Khyati Hooda of Keywords Everywhere, ChatGPT handles 54% of queries without using traditional search engines. This alarming stat indicates a shift in how users seek information. As the adoption grows and ChatGPT cements itself as the single source of information, the internet as we know it becomes kinda pointless.
One question? Where does the information originate? From intercepted mobile communications, from nifty listening devices like smart TVs, or from WeChat-style methods? The jump from the Internet to an everything app is a nifty way to state that everything is reducible to bits. Get the bits, get the “information.”
Lester says:
Basically, ChatGPT is cutting out the middleman, but what’s even scarier is that it’s working. ChatGPT reached 1 million users in just 5 days and has 400 million weekly active users as of early 2025, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history. The platform receives over 5.19 billion visits per month, ranking as the 8th most visited website in the world.
He explains:
What started as a chatbot has become a platform where people book travel, plan meals, write emails, create schedules, and even do homework. Surveys show that around 80% of ChatGPT users leverage it for professional tasks such as drafting emails, creating reports, and generating marketing content. This marks a fundamental shift in how we engage with the internet, where more everyday tasks move from web browsing to a prompt.
How likely is this shift, Lester? Lester responds in a ZDNet-type way:
I wouldn’t be surprised if ChatGPT added a super agent that does tasks autonomously by December of this year. Amazed? Sure. But surprised? Nah. It’s not hard to imagine a near future where ChatGPT doesn’t just replace the internet but OpenAI becomes the foundation for future companies, in the same way that roads became the foundation for civilization.
Lester interprets the shift as mostly good news. Jobs will be created. There are a few minor problems; for instance, retraining and changing business models. Otherwise, Lester does not see too many new problems. In fact, he makes his message clear:
If you stand still, never evolve, never improve your skills, and never push yourself to be better, life will decimate you like a gorilla vs 100 men.
But what if the gorilla is Google? And that Google creature has friends like Microsoft and others. A super human like Elon Musk or Pavel Durov might jump into the fray against the men, presumably from OpenAI.
Convergence and collapsing to an “everything” app is logical. However, humans are not logical. Plus smart software has a couple of limitations. These include cost, energy requirements, access to information, pushback from humans who cannot be or do not want to be “retrained,” and making stuff up (you know, hallucinations like gluing cheese on pizza).
Net net: Old school search is now wearing a new furry suit, but WeChat and Telegram are existing “everything” apps. Mr. Musk and Sam AI-Man know or sense there is a future in co-opting the idea, bolting on smart software, and hitting the marketing start button. However, envisioning and pulling off are two different things. China allegedly helped WeChat think about its role; Telegram’s founder visited Russia dozens of times prior to his arrest in France. What nation state will husband a Western European or American “everything” app?
Mr. Musk has a city in Texas. Perhaps that’s why he has participated in a shadow dance with Telegram?
Lester, you have identified the “everything” app. Good work. Don’t forget WeChat débuted in 2011. Telegram rolled out in 2013. Now a decade later, the “everything” app is the next big thing. Okay. But who is the “we” in the essay’s title? It is not this dinobaby.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2025
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