Another takeaway from the 2014 “Internet Trends” report – http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends
Apps are going away from multi-function… to single purpose
Early apps (especially brand apps) took a web concept, and applied it to our apps. (Think of the Facebook app). These are multi-purpose apps that do a number of different “brand tasks”.
Increasingly, apps are becoming “single purpose”. We are looking for simple apps that do one thing… not a “Swiss Army Knife” approach.
We are seeing massive acquisitions or development of these stand-alone apps (Facebook messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp)
Implications:
As we talk app-development in the future let’s continue to think through the best approach. Are we better off creating the “swiss-army” app with a number of different functions? Or is that best left to the mobile web? Should we be thinking more of developing our apps around specific tasks our users want do accomplish?
