Average American spends 80% of their app time in top three apps | Hacker News Reader

Average American spends 80% of their app time in top three apps

qz.com

50 pointstillingworth27 comments

Personally that's because I think most apps suck and I'd rather use their website in safari. Furthermore many mobile sites annoy me and I try hard to stick with their desktop site.

So yes, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Safari/mail (do those count) account for a ridiculous amount of my app usage even though they're just a more normally distributed slice of my internet traffic

A sad side effect is that the internet became silo-ed in these all-powerful 3 or 10 apps. We used to be able to index anything, now it's not possible any more. Also, we put much of our interaction and output into a few companies who can do whatever they want with our data, such as profiling and leaking to police. It's more convenient for them and the state.

The new AOL walled garden is here. You can't hack your FB app to apply a Grease Monkey script any more on your phone.

I think some people forget that the browser (and mobile web) is just an app too. One with unlimited content and a really cool back end that anyone, anywhere in the world can update in real time.

Sure, and is so is your home screen and so is the dialer, but when people say "apps" they mean specific service-based installable applications.

Time spent make sense to rank social media apps powered by ads. However, this metric doesn't reflect the true value of commerce apps.

I doubt people spend much time on the Uber or Amazon app, but they generate a massive amount of revenue anyways.

This is a great point. I spend a good deal of money on the Amazon and Lyft apps but I don't spend hardly any time IN the app. Lyft even more so than Amazon as I'm waiting for the ride. On Amazon I know what I'm getting before I open the app, I don't enjoy "browsing" on the Amazon app. Also I wonder how they count something like Spotify or Audible, I spend money for both but rarely have the app in the foreground.

I believe the point is that a lot of information is driven by these apps rather than specific apps, which makes them the new media oligopolies, to be crass.

sounds like Zipf's Law [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

Exactly, the same type of distribution seen across many natural phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#Empirical_examples_o...

Wow, it's like app use follows a power-law, like almost every other phenomenon in recorded history...

I'm always amazed that more people are astounded by facts like these rather than expecting them.

How does ComScore collect this data?

I find myself in this group as well: I don't think I ever used more than 3 "serious" apps in my phone. The alarm clock is one of them.

torch for me. and of course the e-reader.

Goes to show you that Mark Zuckerberg was very smart in buying Instagram and WhatsApp. Also shows that Microsoft has a massive opportunity on the productivity side. For those that aren't heavy social users, apps like Mail and Calendar are ripe for displacement by more intelligent alternatives e.g. Sunrise.

It seems like they have removed the default apps like Mail. They should be included in any analysis.

Steve Jobs had it right with iPhone 1 when it came out with just 10 apps. The only problem was it wasn't the right ten apps.

No he didn't.

The three apps in the title are different for everyone.

I use a network diagnostics app every now and then and it's wonderful. I doubt that would've made the cut, and I paid for it even though it's not in the 80% time spent. I would've paid 10 times for the equivalent application on a PC, but I didn't, and I get to carry it in my pocket.

Imagine if computers had only 10 apps.

Which app do you use?

Chrome Wikipedia HackerNews

80% seems right.

Wechat / Pleco / Kindle

I'd estimate well over 80% of my phone use is those three apps. Why would I do on the phone what I could do perfectly well on a computer?

> Why would I do on the phone what I could do perfectly well on a computer?

Because sometimes you want to do something and aren't at a computer. Or, at least, that's always seemed the point to having a phone-sized computer in your pocket.

Well, yes, that's why the Kindle app is on my phone. If I were at home I'd use the actual kindle. Wechat is a messaging app. And pleco is a chinese dictionary; it has to be on the phone so I can look characters up by drawing them (fun fact: this is why I bought a phone with a touchscreen in the first place). But between books and messaging, the "you're bored" case is pretty well covered.

What a waste of productivity.

Wasting productivity may be necessary for society to sustain rapid population growth.

I think that it's quite obvious that the fields to economics and sociology are lagging a 100 years behind medical science. So that ship has sailed.

Only if you value productivity over pleasure, why should we?

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