6 app fads…
… that soon disappeared.
Sometimes, the Next Big Thing is also the Very Short-Lived Thing
At the time of writing, Pokémon GO is a total sensation, bringing together people in real life to catch small digital creatures – and if it’s continually developed, it could be a long-term hit. But by the time you actually read this, it could equally have already lost its appeal, consigned to the annals of App Store history like so many other trends that spiked and then quickly faded.
The big thing about the iPhone, apps, and the App Store is the speed and convenience of grabbing something to try it. Any idea that sounds compelling can pull in millions of users in just a couple of days! But actually keeping them… well, that requires something a bit deeper. Something that these apps ultimately just didn’t have. Draw Something Everyone loved drawing things and guessing what other people’s crude Neanderthal scratchings were supposed to be, for a month or two. And then the fascination just kind of tailed off. Anonymous message apps Lots of people made anonymous confessions in apps such as Secret and PostSecret… but the apps were open to abuse, making them pretty short-lived. Yo. Yo sends a message that says “Yo” to people who have the app, like a Facebook “Poke” for people who aren’t on Facebook. People tried it, then realized it was kinda pointless, then uninstalled it. Flappy Bird For a few weeks, everyone played this kinda shoddy game because it was hard, and people wanted to master it. Then the developer took it away. Phones with it still installed sold for thousands of dollars, inexplicably. Miitomo Nintendo released this weird game/ social hybrid, and for two whole days, it was absolutely everywhere. But, as it turned out, it only really contained two days’ worth of fun. Face-swapping This was more of a Snapchat fad than an independent app fad, but still – early in 2016, everyone was swapping faces with friends, pets, and toys. But the trend quickly disappeared. A bit like a Snapchat pic.