
Are We Suffering From Mobile App Burnout? - robg
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/digital-diary-are-we-suffering-from-mobile-app-burnout/?src=rechp&gwh=E2379C1B8CDD3BC2B8D61488492C8FDD
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zmitri
As someone who builds an app with slightly less than 60K users, I'd say this
is quite telling of the app industry. A lot of people just dump gas on the
distribution flame without any sense of retention. They blow up kind of
quickly, but then completely burn out. A lot of investors poured money in to
mobile startups over the past 2 years, without product or traction and people
are starting to panic. They are pivoting and cloning apps in a last ditch
effort to get bridge financing.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think people are going to start rejecting the notion
that real time social networks are the end all and be all of consumption and
creation on the mobile phone. Users are getting tired of it, and they are
giving us that feedback like crazy.

I've heard YC folks always talk about making something 100 people really love
before trying to make something 10^n (n > 6) people will really love. I think
it's a good approach because it's hard to know whether you're on to something
unless you can measure how many new users each user brings in.

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genwin
When only 1K apps have more than 50K users, it makes one wonder how many app-
only startups will survive in the long run. Unless it's for business it seems
that even 50K users on all three major platforms wouldn't support even one
employee.

~~~
verelo
As a co-founder of a startup with much more than 50k users, this 1k app metric
shocks me. Does anyone know how Onavo come up with that metric? I've installed
their app once, but removed it fairly soon after (so they probably only have a
small sample of what I actually use) and i don't see any way for us as a
company to integrate.

Edit: Cleaned up my question.

~~~
guiambros
Besides, there's the bias of Onavo's users. Given their product, they tend to
be more tech savvy, frequent travelers, users of (limited) intl data plans.

I'm skeptical their sample would be a good representation of the mainstream
app audience.

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mmastrac
Unrelated to story content, but relevant to the linked site:

It looks like the NYTimes paywall has become more sophisticated. Simply
clearing cookies and localStorage wasn't enough to open it up. I had to open
the link in an incognito window before it would let me read it.

~~~
methehack
Kills me that otherwise intelligent consumers are unwilling to pay for
something as expensive to create and as high quality as the new york times.
Makes me want to give up on product development altogether. Seriously -- if
that's not good enough, what will be?

~~~
mmastrac
I'd have no problem paying for it if it was a significant part of my life. I
generally just skim the majority of the non-technical articles on HN, not
paying attention to who the provider is. Apparently I've clicked and skimmed
ten of these NYTimes articles in the last 17 days, which doesn't seem too
unlikely given that they show up on HN fairly often.

If you're going to go all high-and-mighty about this, maybe we should be
putting a [paywall] link on the HN frontpage so I can avoid clicking these
articles altogether.

~~~
untog
The NYT paywall actually excludes traffic coming from social sources like
Facebook and Twitter. They don't do so for Hacker News, though (and I'm not
sure about Reddit). So the general principle supports your use-case, it just
isn't fine-tuned for the specific sites you use.

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overgard
I think this is just a market correction. There are a lot of things that are
"apps" that don't really need to be apps. (Almost any "reader" for a website,
for example). Now that an app isn't a novelty, there's going to be a natural
backlash to things that we don't really need.

~~~
_k
I think you're right. A lot of companies are making an app to show the
contents of their website. That just doesn't make sense. The app I use for
that is the browser.

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benologist
I think this entire premise is silly.... most apps and to a much bigger extent
websites, social games, steam etc, solve temporary needs.

The odds of _anything_ being integrated into my day to day life are virtually
non-existant.

It's much more likely something will please or amuse or occupy me briefly (if
at all).

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6thSigma
This whole app fatigue concept is such nonsense. What percentage of websites
have 50k active users? Do we have website fatigue?

Good apps will rise to the top. That is what they call a market.

~~~
zmitri
Not necessarily the case. It depends what your market is. The early adopter
App Store audience is quite diverse, and not at all like the tech early
adopter crowd.

In terms of growth, being on the US front page is absolutely huge, so there's
lots of politics about getting on there. If you have connections, it's a lot
easier to get up there.

~~~
6thSigma
Couldn't the same be said about any business? Getting your website covered by
TechCrunch would also be easier with connections.

~~~
hayksaakian
I think he means to extinguish the notion that placement could be based on any
kind of merit.

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pixl97
Why should mobile apps be any different from any other kind of software? A few
popular apps tend to dominate the market and the rest just fill niches.

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rubyrescue
I highly doubt the 1k/50k stat - I have personally written 6 apps with more
than that - so i've written slightly more than 1/2 of 1% of all apps in the
app store with more than 50k users? unlikely...

~~~
anonymouz
They seem to be talking about active users, that use the app regularly while
you seem to be talking about downloads.

Note in particular the quote just following the paragraph you are referring
to: "For the typical app, less than half the people who download it use it
more than once, said Guy Rosen, the chief executive of Onavo."

~~~
rubyrescue
interesting. that would reduce it to probably 3 though... still a shocking
stat but more likely.

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MattRogish
I used to work at a mobile app company that made iOS and Android apps. I
generally agree. Folks are taking gambles on apps that they really shouldn't.

Lots and lots of apps are far better off as mobile web, especially given all
the maintenance/update headaches (app store submissions are still painful and
not automated).

There's still a nice monitization story if you're willing to give away 20-30%,
but I think the long run equilibrium are fewer apps (not zero, but fewer).
They do definitely have value but right now they're overhyped.

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dinkumthinkum
This poor author. I think the NYT is putting too much pressure on him to churn
out these tech fluff stories and there's not enough material out there. Sorry!

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CptCodeMonkey
Just in context of the subject, I bet there is an app to measure how burned
out you are on apps.

