to be popular
first people have to find you
new blog’s dilemma
haiku by M. Nakazato LaFreniere
Advice common to new bloggers is to use social media and make things accessible for the phone. I never did social media much before but in the last couple months have put a facebook page for myself and started learning pinterest. There is still Twitter, Instagram and a whole host to learn. Sighs. Thank goodness I read one advice that said don’t sign up for everything. Learn one and become an expert at it.
So if I’m going to learn one, which one? Below I found some articles listing popular or most used apps. I pulled out the social network (and communications) ones.
Most popular app downloads 2012-2017
So I thought, well what’s popular these days? I found a cool article: Six Years of the Most Popular Apps, in One Infographic which lays out a graphic from Reddit from IrwinRSchyster1 of the 5 most popular phone apps to be downloaded, both free and bought from each year: 2012-2017. Before you get all excited, that means in each year new users or people getting a new phone and downloading their favorite apps (or redownloading if they’ve lost their phone). It’s not a graph of which apps are most used. Once people downloading something, they might be using it everyday but they don’t need to redownload it unless something happens to their phone or a major update. So Twitter doesn’t show up but it could be because most users already have it and it’s not constantly being downloaded. Granted most of the apps are games but looking over the years, a few social apps show up consistently in the list. Each year shows the top 5 for iPhone & Android:
2012: Facebook, Facebook messenger
2013: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat
2014: Facebook, Flipagram, Facebook messenger, Instagram
2015: Facebook, Facebook messenger, Instagram, Youtube
2016: Facebook messenger, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube
2017 (partial year): Facebook messenger, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube
10 Most Frequently used apps Q2 2013
Mashable graphed The 10 Most Frequently Used Smartphone Apps from Q2 of 2013 using Statista:
Q2 2013: Facebook, Youtube, Google+, WeChat, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram
10 most used apps, 10 most popular apps at home, favorite apps demographics
Business Insider did one more recently: These are the 10 most used smartphone apps on August 29, 2017. It doesn’t state the timeframe the information is drawn from though (followed by the % of users):
Facebook (81%), Youtube (71%), Facebook messenger (68%), Instagram (50%), Snapchat (50%), Gmail (44%),
Avery Hartmans who wrote that BI article, wrote another one a few days earlier: The 10 most popular apps people keep on their home screens on August 26, 2017 showing a large crossover on folk’s at-home computers:
Facebook (46%), Gmail (41%), Facebook Messenger (34%), Youtube (33%), Instagram (24%)
Pulling on the same data Hartmans used, the “comScore’s 2017 US Mobile App Report”, Tanya Dua wrote Fresh data shows millennials’ favorite apps — and it’s bad news for Snapchat on August 24, 2017. Again she didn’t give the time frame covered either. The essential top 8 apps her article listed for various demographics are:
ages 18-24: Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, Facebook messenger, Instagram
ages 25-34: Facebook, Youtube, Facebook messenger, Instagram, Snapchat
ages 35-54: Facebook, Youtube, Facebook messenger, Instagram, Gmail
ages 55+: Facebook, Facebook messenger, Youtube, Instagram, Gmail
And FYI, the only search engine to show up on any of these lists across the years was Google Search. I went ahead and included Facebook messenger and Gmail although they aren’t social networks just because.
So what does this all mean?
I need more information, lol. I already have facebook like everyone else. But I think I better head out to Instagram because I’ve never even been there!
References:
Six Years of the Most Popular Apps, in One Infographic by Kirsten Akens, Lifehacker, September 29, 2017
The Most Popular Apps by Year from 2012-2017 (based on the app purchases and downloads for Android and iPhone) (image) from IrwinRSchyster1, Reddit, September 27, 2017 (says 5 days ago and today is 10/1/17)
The 10 Most Frequently Used Smartphone Apps by Zoe Fox, Mashable, August 5, 2013
These are the 10 most used smartphone apps by Avery Hartmans, Business Insider, August 29, 2017
The 10 most popular apps people keep on their home screens by Avery Hartmans, Business Insider, August 26, 2017
Fresh data shows millennials’ favorite apps — and it’s bad news for Snapchat, by Tanya Dua, Business Insider, August 24, 2017
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