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Mmm... I guess I'm a cynic, but people are, surprisingly, not as stupid as you think. If a company has a phone app, there's a reason. It might be so they can h
by shadowmint 14y ago
Mmm... I guess I'm a cynic, but people are, surprisingly, not as stupid as you think. If a company has a phone app, there's a reason.
It might be so they can harvest your contacts.
It might be so they can have a 'premium' version because they think it'll convert better than a web pay wall.
It might be so they have add invasive (read: profitable) ads directly to your device, which (arguably) convert better than web banners which people have 1) banner blindness to and 2) are more difficult to block.
It might be because they are stupid and they're playing "me too" because other people have apps, and hey, there must be a reason for that right?
...but I'm pretty sure the people in category (4) aren't the majority. Most of the people making these apps are doing it for their own nefarious reasons. It's sure as hell not because they're chasing a 'good user experience'.
Dont download and install this kind of app, ever
Even doing that once is probably a +ve data point in the 'lets keep making out ##$@ty native app' business case.
- Lagged2Death 14y agoI think a lot of the development of apps (and before that the web itself) was "me-tooism," but that doesn't necessarily make it stupid. It's more a matter of getting on the bandwagon while things are still heating up, and figuring out how to make it work for you as you go. "The web is going mobile; we need to be on mobile; the mobile world is a world of apps; therefore we need an app to stake out a presence in that space." No part of the chain of reasoning is wrong or stupid in and of itself, but the product of thousands of actors following the same logic is chaos and waste. You could see it as a variation on the tragedy of the commons.