go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Mobile Apps Are Challenging TV In A Way The Web Never Did

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-apps-television-time-spent-2012-12

A new study by Flurry, a mobile-analytics company, shows that usage of mobile apps is rapidly catching up with television.

Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf reports that the company has tracked a total of a trillion “events”—actions inside apps like finishing a game level or making a restaurant reservation. Those numbers have grown exponentially in the past two years.

All those taps and swipes translate to a significant amount of usage. 

In the US, time spent on the Web has stagnated at 70 minutes per day. Television watching has grown slightly, from 162 minutes to 168 minutes. But app usage has almost doubled from 66 minutes to 127 minutes a day. At current growth rates, it should catch up with television within a year.

This isn’t necessarily bad for television content producers, Khalaf notes, who are increasingly adapting their shows to be watched alongside a tablet or smartphone—the “second screen” phenomenon.

“We believe that, with the introduction of connected TVs, TV shows will behave like apps,” he writes.

Flurry’s results match what other observers are saying, like Kleiner Perkins Internet expert Mary Meeker.

But as Peter Kafka of AllThingsD points out, the explosion of mobile usage doe! sn’t nec essarily mean a mobile-ad bonanza.

And since we’re not getting more hours in the day, it’s pretty clear that the increased usage of apps must be happening simultaneously with other activities—like, yes, watching television.

SEE ALSO: Mary Meeker’s Latest Must-Read Presentation On The State Of The Web

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Social image-sharing site Pinterest, which is the toast of Silicon Valley and the VC world, has passed 10 million users after only 9 months.

TechCrunch reports that it got exclusive stats from ComScore showing that Pinterest had 11.7 million unique monthly visitors in January 2011. That’s up from only 7.5 million in December…and a scant 418,000 last May.

That’s the fastest growth ever for a standalone site.

Users aren’t spending that much time at the site — about 90 minutes a month, compared with 7 hours for Facebook. But it’s clear that Pinterest is a huge phenomenon.

Most interesting, it took off among non-techies first. That’s a great reminder for startups trying to stand out — the world is a lot bigger than your friends who work at tech companies. Sometimes, you have to get outside the bubble.

See also: The Secret To Pinterest’s Astounding Success.

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