Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Apps Style

Apple currently has 350,000 different apps in its app store, with Android trailing behind at a steady 250,000.  The question is: will you ever be satisfied with your apps?

Jay Deragon, CEO of Social Flights, LLC recently published an article discussing the amount of satisfaction users gain from their use of social media.

Deragon divide’s users’ social media engagements into three categories, summarized as follows:

1. “Must be’s”: these are the apps and social media access that you have come to expect on a daily basis, strictly basic things like Facebook and Twitter.
2. “More is better”: a step above the basics, this is where things like yfrog.com come in.  You have Twitter, it works great, but you find that you like adding photos and videos to your posts.
3. “Delighters”: Nobody expected to be sucked into the world of social media, but now you can hardly leave your house without “checking in” to foursquare.  Maybe you even have a check-in at your house.  Stranger things have happened.

What does all this mean?

The average young adult will pick up a new Smartphone and update their Facebook status before they even leave the store.  Young adults these days have a good sense of what they expect out of Smartphones and the social media that comes with them – here are their “must be’s.”  This same age group will rapidly progress to Deragon’s second social media engagement of “more is better” with the greatest of ease, Tweeting pictures and uploading video streams.  Last but not least comes the “delighters.”  Whereas Facebook and Twitter were expected and yfrog.com was a seamless transition, the phenomenon that is social media takes its toll and people are “checking in” wherever they go.

Although not every app deals with social media it is easy to see that social media applications are the big ticket items.  Take Twitter for example: should you download Tweetdeck, or opt for Hootsuite?  People get all riled up about the best way to synchronize all of their accounts.  Upon entering the world of the almighty apps people may not expect to fall so far down the rabbit hole, but Jay Deragon’s research on the social media phenomenon breaks it down for consumers.

Whether or not users are satisfied with their social media outlets depends entirely on their expectations.  There is, therefore, a Catch-22: peoples’ expectations are continually rising.  Not very long ago camera phones were just gaining popularity, but now they are almost standard.  The thing about consumers is that they will never be fully satisfied if the bar keeps rising, and that lack of satisfaction keeps the social media engineers on their toes.

Have you visited your app store today?

References:

http://socialmediatoday.com/jderagon/277591/social-media-usage-satisfaction

http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-of-the-week-ipad-competition-is-toast-2011-3#google-is-closing-the-gap-on-apples-app-store-3