One of the first signs I noticed of this was startups we funded not caring much what their domain name was. IIRC that trend began about a year to 18 months ago.
Mobile web apps like Facebook prove that you can build a non-trivial app that runs in a web browser and have the experience be so good that people don't even care about the native app version (at least everyone I know just uses Facebook right from their mobile web browser).
A good domain name is still valuable. This is more true especially as more access to phone hardware gets opened up to JavaScript APIs right from the browser. You just can't beat making a change to your app on your server and having all your users get new versions the next time they visit. It's way better than waiting weeks for Apple to review and approve your changes.
1) Inertia (that's the way I've been doing it for a decade, dagnammit), and
2) It's an easier context-switch. Rather than go back to the home screen, swipe over to the next app, and tap it, you just just type in the first few letters of the url, then select the site you want to go to from the drop down list.
But
1) Has had pretty poor predictive value in the last few years, and there's no reason to suggest it'll improve. Our entire industry is built around disrupting inertia.
2) Is ripe for disruption. At the end of the day, when you get right down to it, entering the first few letters of a url then selecting the correct site is both an arbitrary, and not particularly optimized workflow. The fact that we are used to it does not mean there aren't far better systems out there. Sure, Chrome on my MBP has learned to take me to my top 10 sites with cmd-l -> $url[0] -> enter, but my mom needs her buttons on the bookmark bar. I tried to remove the titles, thinking she could easily recognize the favicons, but no dice. She needs a start menu-like interface.
Similarly, I was on the bus with my friend, browsing reddit. He buys tons of apps for his iPhone, and he looks at my screen and says, "is their mobile app free?" I said, "well, yes, but most people just browse to reddit.com/.compact". he stared at me in disbelief. Why would you use the browser if you can have an app?
For those of us who live and breath the Internet, it seems only natural that a write-once-run-anywhere website would be more appealing than having to download some stupid app from some stupid store, type in your password, then have to remember which home screen it's on, etc. For those who use the internet as casual content consumers, however, apps take a lot of the frustration out of it. Want to read the economist? Tap the economist button. That's it. Want to watch a youtube video? Tap the youtube button. Need directions? Tap the map button.
For the casual user, these workflows are far more intuitive. My friend, who has spent hundreds of dollars in the App Store, rarely uses the browser on his phone. He uses the Plenty of Fish app, the Chive app, etc. For most non-technical users, this just makes sense. It might seem annoying to us, but we are not the largest market segment by far.
Now it might be that we'll see mobile web sites with a light wrapper disguised as apps; perhaps cache and a link that opens in the browser. Maybe we'll see native support for the kinds of things that are typically done in the browser. But, crucially, what I don't think we'll see is the dominance of mobile web over native clients. For the vast majority of people out there, I think they just want the app.
If you made an "app browser" that allowed better searching (type the first letter and the app appears --- tap to open it), sorting (like bookmark folders) and easy navigation between apps, you'd be presenting me a much better experience than the current process of finding and switching between apps on your phone.
That said, I still think pure mobile web could be the future. Why couldn't Apple allow mobile web apps to be sold in the app store? It's an icon that opens a web page. It could be as simple as that.
Let's take it a step further. Imagine that when you download this new type of mobile web app, Apple calls a JavaScript API that reads the HTML manifest in the 'index' file and loads the resources in the background. Apple shows the downloading bar over the app icon while this happens, just like downloading an app today. When you click it, everything is loaded and ready to rock.
The iPhone has this. Just swipe right on the home screen.
> and easy navigation between apps
On the iPhone, double tap the home button and you get a taskbar of your running apps.
> Why couldn't Apple allow mobile web apps to be sold in the app store? It's an icon that opens a web page. It could be as simple as that.
Phonegap allows you to bundle a html/javascript webapp as a native iPhone application. There are even hooks in there to access the camera, gps, etc.
This is the main reason it won't happen; app store review is one of the key parts of Apple's positioning.
In the case of most startups, native apps are unnecessary. I already see that feeling trend my geek friends ("Ah, not another of those sites that want me to download their app. I just want to see the [movie listings, items for sale, opening hours, etc.]").
Worth noting, also, that Facebook (and Twitter) is mostly just a window with a browser (hence why the mobile sites are very similar).
I think the point the original post was trying to make was that in deciding between Web and native app, only native apps will be necessary. In other words, why spend the time developing a Web app when everyone will use it on a mobile anyway.
(I just want to point out that there's a large part of my soul that is just torn over agreeing with this post, because I would much prefer an open Web to proprietary apps. And I built Web apps for years. However, denial does not become an entrepreneur.)
And from what I understand, Facebook has done a lot of significant engineering to try and improve the performance while keeping it mostly HTML5.
Mobile web apps aren't ready.
That, and an app seems to have more authority than a website. "This is Facebook, and I know it." sort of thing.
I discovered it when I was at Starbucks. My session expired and the NewsFeed displayed the Starbucks login page instead.
Pure speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Until this exact moment, it never even occurred to me to use Facebook from mobile safari. I just tried it out and it is pretty impressive; it looks (and works) very much like the app but with a slower and less responsive UI. If given the choice, I don't see why anyone would use the web version over the app though.
Although, some 'apps' solve this by adding an icon to the home screen or an embedding a web view inside a native app container. Sadly, I don't know enough about these solutions to critique effectively.
Dropbox, pre startup, would you even have paid the $10 for it? Not sure...but now? of course.
What makes a brandable domain? For one worders like stripe/path and all, it's easy, but dropbox? How could someone have predicted it's "brandability"?