Just Because an App Is Popular Doesn’t Mean It’s Good.
Some apps are popular because they are useful or because they solve a problem. Others are popular because they are Kardashian apps: they are known for their fame. Everyone else is using them, or because they have a large budget and “growth hackers” in the state tasked with pooling the intelligence of their company. Before you sign up, pay money or give away your details, let’s make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.
Why is Slack, a team-oriented chat app so popular that it has tons of comments about how it “kills email,” when in reality (let’s be honest) it’s just (let’s be honest) glorified and less provocative IRC form? What might be causing people to keep using Snapchat even if the company doesn’t care about your safety and the entire service is just the glorified MMS that’s already built into your phone? What motivates developers to keep creating leaky, ill-conceived “self-destruct messages” apps, even though they claim to be “just for fun” as a category, but sell themselves with promises of security and privacy that they don’t intend to hold back ?
Well, the answer is actually simple: the tech industry has a pretty well-defined formula for success: release an app, run into debt to venture capitalists looking to get the next big “whatever ends up being sold to Yahoo or Google,” and start collecting users (and their valuable data) are like candy in a bucket on Halloween night. Once you’ve done all of this, start over from the first and repeat the process. Sounds shitty, right? Yes, but it’s a well-defined process. This is how it works.
Be the first to get there or become famous for your fame
Many of these applications become popular because they are used by default. You know these – they were the first. They really only exist because “everyone uses them,” not because they are particularly new or different from what is already available. Yelp is a great example here: Yelp has more than a few problems , and if you ask people about it, they’ll usually tell you a few variations on “yes, this company can be shady sometimes.” And yet, we all check Yelp reviews before trying a new place because … well, who else are we going to check?
This usually happens when someone comes to their market first or because they hit the public consciousness in such a way that people flock to them – and once this process begins, more and more people join the flock, to the point where that you cannot choose another option, because no one else is using the other options. Uber is a great example of this. Uber has serious problems, from enough sexual assault and incidents that have an entire web page tracking down to super-shady tactics of “luring your critics into even mentioning that you might want to do background checks on your drivers . “ That said, Uber is still your best bet for reliable, ransomware-free and shady transportation, at least in my area, and I bet it’s also one of the best in your area. Uber is a giant, too big to fail just because it is “disruptive,” which means “he had a good idea and was the first to go to market.”
Of course, popularity isn’t always a bad thing. Popular services usually scale to keep up with the growing needs of their users. In general, where people go, money, attention and development efforts go. When users are asking the company to solve problems like, say, drivers attacking passengers in their cars, ideally the company should do something about it. If an app instantly becomes popular, especially if it requires others to use it (like Waze or WhatsApp), that’s great news. This means that the people behind the app (hopefully) not only pay attention to what their users want, but you really get real benefits if you sign up.
But this is a double-edged sword. We often (all too often) hear about new apps that promise to make it easier to chat with friends, sell your stuff, meet people, or do other things that only work if people are already using the app . Every week we hear about some new “self-destruct message” app as we mentioned above. When these services are new, no one uses them, so they are useless. You would subscribe and be the only one of your friends there, or try to sell your things, but there would be no one there to buy. Unfortunately, they will never be helpful unless you stay close, but you have no incentive to wait or spam your friends to get them to join. You can see catch-22.
Many great ideas die in this way. Instead, many mediocre ideas remain in their place, because they came first, and now “everyone uses them.” There are several important things you can think of: Paypal and Facebook come to mind.
Use shady marketing to get everyone talking about you
We can imagine several super popular apps that grew not because they were good, but because there was a name behind them. These are startups in which the phrase “founded by X, who founded [a completely different company that everyone knows]” appears at the beginning of every article about them. The ones made famous by the name and the promise that some visionary who started a company everyone knows is about to strike again with his next big, world-changing idea. The problem is that this is usually bullshit and is just a way to get attention for their press releases and blog posts.
For example, Slack is now the darling of the tech world. Even one of the co-founders of Flickr is behind this. Is this something special? Not really. It is a robust chat app and is beautiful, but not as revolutionary as you might think. This is by no means the first tool to allow people to chat while wearing GIFs and attachments. This is no different from HipChat, TeamChat, or even IRC, which have been around long before. Of course, we use it here at Lifehacker to communicate, but its success, in addition to its modern design, largely depends on keeping it in the public consciousness with loud, bombastic claims that it is a ‘working social network’ and ‘ will kill the “email.” We all know this isn’t true, but it doesn’t stop hot parties from filling out tech blogs either way.
Other services simply manage to buy the mental stake necessary for everyone to know his name. Fill the news with press releases, raise a ton of investment money, and do a little “content marketing” (essentially write your own press and convince people to run it for you). If you’re one of the newest generation of startups, just hire a few “growth hackers” whose job it is to run big social media campaigns and send emails to get everyone talking about you. Make tiny, recurring updates to attract as many new users as possible. Perhaps provoking some controversy about how you are going to “revolutionize” what everyone is using, or that you are “Uber / Netflix / Facebook / Yelp from [insert category].” This will get people involved. Of course, it also helps to give away your product for free without revealing what it will actually cost to the people who use it.
Many of these tactics are of the “inside baseball” media types, but you can see the problem. This is something that industry professionals come across behind the scenes every day looking through their inboxes, but at the end of the day, these services need your subscription, and blogs need you to read, so the cycle continues. This is bullshit, but here it is. Be careful when clicking.
None of this is inherently bad , it’s just stupid.
Look, in an idealistic sense, no one would use an app if they weren’t benefiting from it. We’re not just talking about “productive” applications. An app that keeps you entertained in your spare time is just as “useful” as an app that makes sure you leave home in time for an important meeting at work. However, you must decide what “real benefit” means to you before registering or installing.
This may sound like common sense, but it’s harder than you think. Take a look at your phone. How many apps have you installed but haven’t used in the last 30 days? How about someday? Do the same for your computer. Chances are, you (like most of us) will switch to apps and services that promise a more productive and fulfilling life. Of course, we have discussed several times the pitfalls of this thinking and how it encourages us to spend more time “optimizing” our life than living it. Usually the goal of “being productive” is to help you do what you should be doing so that you have time for what you want to do , right? The next time you sign up for a new service that promises to “kill email” or “revolutionize the way we communicate,” ask yourself, “Will subscribing to this service / app / tool enrich my life in a positive way? “
If you can answer yes to this question, such as “yes, it’s fun and helps me to relieve stress,” or “yes, it makes my commute to work less boring,” or “yes, it teaches me what I want to know … . ”Then you can understand that your choice is your own, not someone’s dastardly marketing or a poorly written article on some tech blog replete with press releases. Remember to do this from time to time to make sure that you are channeling your energy (and your too limited willpower ) towards things that really matter, at least to you personally.