Search or Apps?

November 2, 2010

A lot of 20 somethings, MBAs, and English majors working as consultants are darned excited about apps. Apps are applications and closely associated with smartphones and Apple’s iPads. The idea is that a really busy person can use an app to accomplish a task without knowing much more than one learns getting an automated teller machine to report that one’s checking account balance is running low. (Quick. Invent a new buzzword and sell some expertise!)

Apps are okay. Search sucks. Which does one pursue in order to generate vast amounts of money?

According to “Mobile Commerce: Ten Reasons to Choose the Web over Apps”, smart money bets on the Web. Yep. Now I won’t list the entire 10 reasons offered by eConsultancy.com, but I can point out four reasons and make some comments from the goose pond. For the other six reasons hie thee to eConsultancy. Yep, a rhyme.

The Web kicks Apps for these selected reasons:

Findability, which is New Wave hip-speak for information retrieval. I agree. Finding an app is tough. I just look at the “charts” showing what’s popular or new. This works for me, but I think the eConsultancy crowd wants to keep folks keying search terms. Okay for some, but not for the 20 somethings, MBAs, and English majors working as consultants
Marketing. You know marketing is a problem on both the Web, mobile platforms, and real life. I am not sure the Web offers particular advantages, but it does allow consultants to explain how to get traffic to a Web site. Keep in mind that 99.5 percent of Web sites get lousy traffic.
Links. The Web allows links. Yep, but the links that count are backlinks from high traffic sites or sites that have an elephant like PageRank score. The Web sprawls and apps, at least for the iPhone and iPad, serve a somewhat more narrow audience.
No approval. An app for Apple requires approval. An app for Android can be pretty much whatever one wants. I am not sure about the BlackBerry app store. I used it once and the store did not work, then the app did not work. Maybe curation is good? Brute force is expensive and Google may have to clean up its 100,000 apps someday anyway.

Are you convinced to go Web? I am not. This list reminded me of the editorial process for some of Ziff Communications’ consumer print magazines. Pass the soy sauce.

Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2010

Freebie

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Marketing, Mobile, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.