The Ultra-App

First things first - this is not my idea - it was Jamie Smith?? who came up with it in this article - Death to the super-app… long live the ‘ultra-app’.

He's right. The article is brilliant. And then he asks the $70 trillion dollar question , "Can super-apps become more open?"

Now here is where the real gems start showing up...

Look at it this way. Today’s super-apps are narrow, tightly integrated walled gardens. Highly valuable if they can keep the flywheel spinning internally. And if they can capture the winner-takes-all-effects. Inside the garden it’s beautiful. But it’s a ‘zero sum’ game.

A new breed of digital customer platforms are emerging. The vision? We’ll shift from narrow, but tightly integrated businesses… to broad, tightly connected open ecosystems.

But there's a fly in the ointment so to speak...

Of course, there are dependencies. Things like user experience flows, commercial models and liability frameworks. In other words, ‘acceptance networks’ for the data. But that’s coming.

But what if we could overcome these now? And we're now into the final straightaway...

And I’ll say it again. Just like Embedded Finance is disrupting financial services - where ‘every company can become a FinTech company’ - soon, we’ll see Embedded Identity. Where digital identity won’t feel like an extra step or app. It won’t even feel present.

Brilliant!

It’ll just feel like another seamless experience, organized around the individual, rather than the business.

??

And now for the finale...

Ultra-apps will be the next generation of platforms for the digital economy and will open up a limitless set of use cases and new value for people and businesses.

??

Jamie has written about the 'What and the Why'. He hasn't explained the 'How'. I've been working on the 'How' for 18 years. I know exactly 'How' this is going to work. I know exactly how it will overcome user experience issues, commercial models and data privacy frameworks.

Why do I know this?

Because we invented the foundation for this change. We started with the world's biggest open network - http/html and we made it smarter - you can read how we did it here . (RPX owns this patent). But that is only HALF the story. 10 years ago, I started working on the final half. The half that Jamie talks about above. I knew the first half didn't answer all the questions he has raised.

To solve the second half, I had to go down the Healthcare rabbit hole. My goodness was that painful. But it taught me so much. Healthcare all hinges around N of 1 - Me. It took me almost a decade to figure out the commercial side of an Ultra-App.

And then one day it hit me like a ?? bolt. I'd been staring at Google's business model - saying to myself - how can something that is free generate $320B dollars a year in revenue. They use my data and search request (intent) to connect an advertiser to me and pocket a percentage of the ad revenue.

?? Why couldn't I simply connect Me (N of 1) and my user-controlled data privacy sharing choices to an unlimited number of ecosystems and share my real-time data with them instead of Google. This real time consent-based data is more accurate and more valuable than current data sets.

It was John Hagel who came up with the idea for an Infomediary over 20 years ago. I just connected the dots and instead of using my data without sharing the revenue with me, I've figured out a way that an Ultra-App can articulate the appropriate constraints on my data sharing that distributes costs and benefits more fairly and promotes the purposes and values of social domains: health, democracy, education, commerce.

Let's make this real today with an example that has touched my heart thanks to these wonderful women - Clancy Harrison Mariette Abrahams PhD MBA Mia M.

A few weeks ago, I had no idea what Food Dignity was. Mia has written this incredible article that explains it: What does food insecurity actually mean?

In a nutshell - Food insecurity occurs when a household has limited or uncertain access to adequate food.

So, here we have Google generating $320B a year in revenue while everyday 47.7 million people in the US live with some sort of food insecurity. That 16% of the US population is living like this blows my mind.

So, how can we attack that problem? Let's borrow a few lines from the 'Ultra-App' article -

At the center will be the Food Dignity Movement - a business with broad, tightly connected open ecosystems. It will support 'embedded identity' - Where digital identity won’t feel like an extra step or app. It won’t even feel present. It will just feel like another seamless experience, organized around the individual (Me, N of 1), rather than the business. And it will open up a limitless set of use cases and new value for people and businesses.

I'm going to finish this article with two images - one for the US and one for the EU which are ahead of the curve when it comes to digital identity. In this image we use a 'standards' based wallet. You can swap out the term 'Augmented app' in this image for 'Your Org's' Ultra App.

In this image we use the EUID wallet.

You're probably thinking - how about you 'show me the money Peter'.

Funny you should ask. I went to a meeting once a week for 6 years at Healthcare Payer/Provider Kaiser Permanente where the beginning of every meeting started with those words. After I figured out the answer (Google's business model inverted) we built an online ecosystem ROI calculator.

You can find it here - https://3pchoice.me/ecosystem-value-calculator

47.1 million people using FDM once a day generating just 5 cents of 'value' drives $850M dollars a year in revenue. All of which can be distributed more equitably between the stakeholders, to promote the purposes and values of social domains: health, democracy, education, commerce and so on.

I'm just scratching the surface here when it comes to revenue generation. 47 million users a day is also scratching the surface. The broader the open ecosystem becomes the more it will attract new users. Pretty soon FDM can drive Google TTM revenue.

And we can banish Food Insecurity.