[lzrs]

Absolutely correct. I propose a solution at the end of the essay.

Under my proposed system, apps are installed into a group. So you bring all of your social graph and data.

Alice could invite Bob and Carole to a group. From the group, instead of a chat UI, there would be an app launcher. They could launch into a chat app, a game, or any sort of social/multiplayer experience.

Essentially, there is never a bootstrapping problem for any app because the platform itself provides the social graph. There is also no interoperability problem because versions are consistent across the group (although you could run two forks in parallel, but they would never talk to each other).

Not all apps can be built on this platform, but a large number of useful apps can.