Tag: mobile apps

Mobile apps are increasing in use

| April 14, 2014

At the same time, surfing the web over smartphones has started to decline.

Recent news about the use of mobile apps from Furry, an analytics provider, has shown that the usage of native applications over smartphones is continuing to rise, but it is doing so at the expense of the use of the web.

The data from the company showed users spend an average of 2 hours and 42 minutes on their devices each day.

This usage, which was accurate as of March 2014, represents a notable growth, as the same figure a year beforehand had been 2 hours and 38 minutes. Of that time, the usage of mobile apps represents 2 hours and 19 minutes. Equally, the amount of time spent surfing the mobile web has dropped in the United States, from having been 20 percent of the time spent on those devices in 2013 to only 14 percent, this year. This means that only 22 minutes per day are being spent on surfing.

This could suggest that the influence and attraction of mobile apps is growing among consumers.

Mobile apps increasing in useAccording to Simon Khalaf, the CEO of Flurry, these changes suggest that the mobile browser is only one of a large number of other applications on a mobile device. He explained that a browser on a smartphone is “a single application swimming in a sea of apps.” The data that Flurry gathered in order to make this conclusion was from its network that represents more than 450,000 smartphone applications. Those apps are installed on more than 1.3 billion devices located around the globe.

At the same time, it used comScore for the data regarding the use of apps and browsers, and it used NetMarketShare in order to determine the distribution of the usage of mobile browsers. This means that as interesting as the claims from Flurry may be, it is combining data from several sources which each have their own methodologies. While this does not indicate that the data is necessarily inaccurate, there is no way to verify the accuracy of what it suggests, either.

The report also looked into the types of mobile apps that were the most popular and determined that gaming is still the category with the greatest usage, representing 32 percent of the time spent on smartphones. Facebook was in second place at 17 percent.

Mobile apps now give smartphone users an anti social media advantage

| April 9, 2014

This will help people to be able to avoid people when they are aiming not to have a chance encounter.

For people who are looking to make sure that they won’t accidentally run into their exes while they’re out, there are now mobile apps coming out that have the exact opposite goal of many of the social media options that are currently available.

There are two applications that have been released within the past few weeks for this reason.

Both Split and Cloak are mobile apps that use geolocation technology to map the position of individuals that users don’t want to run into someone they used to date. Anyone who doesn’t want to be seen can be avoided through the use of this location based tech application. It utilizes updates on location in combination with check-ins that are made on other social networks.

The founders of both mobile apps claim that avoiding exes was the primary inspiration.

According to Split’s founder, Udi Dagan, there was one “bad night” in which he ran into two of his ex-girlfriends and. This caused him to come up with an app in which check-ins are used from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram, so that people can be tracked and avoided when they are located nearby.Mobile Apps - Anti-Social

From the Cloak side, a co-founder, Chris Baker, explained that “My co-founder Brian ran into his ex four times in one month.” He went on to say that this let them know that they “had to do something.” That application uses Foursquare and Instagram to help a user to be able to find both friends and not-so friends. Baker explained that Twitter and Facebook would be added very shortly.

The founders of both products were not completely unaware of the issue of privacy concerns that potential users would bring forward. They also both responded to claims that they would be contributing to potential stalking and other location privacy issues by saying that all of the information that would be made available through the applications would already be posted over social media. These mobile apps simply aggregate the information that is already being posted by the individuals to be avoided.