[JohnFen]

> The average social media site is clearly a web app, right?

I never considered them as such, no. Those (including HN) are just ordinary websites with some amount of interactivity.

To me, a "web app" is a thing that replicates a normal application in web form. Things like GMail, Office, etc. In other words, they aren't things that uniquely leverage the web, they're things that are using the web as a shortcut to platform independence.

But perhaps the definition has changed, and I need to be much more explicit and specific instead of using the term "web app". I could buy that, but it also means that I don't actually know what a "web app" is anymore.

[shawnz]

This seems like an artificially restrictive definition that necessarily excludes anything that you might actually enjoy using. Doesn't it just naturally make sense that the software you enjoy using most is the software that's designed idiomatically around the platform it runs on? If "web app" is defined to mean "software not meant for the web, but shoehorned onto it" then of course all web apps will suck.