Enthusiasm for exploring new content on the Play Store is at an all-time low. The appeal of mobile applications lies in innovation, with app developers providing services to fill needs that users didn’t even know they had. However, genuinely interesting apps are becoming increasingly difficult to find due to laziness, unoriginality, and homogenization.
Homogenization is a significant issue, with every app borrowing more and more content from its contemporaries until their distinctive lines become blurred. This is particularly evident with social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, whose apps used to be unique and distinctive. Now, they all sport feature lists that look disconcertingly similar.
For example, the story feature, where users could give quick updates on their lives, was exclusive to Snapchat. Now it’s a common feature on all other social platforms, even on messaging apps like WhatsApp. This is awkward for Snapchat since the story feature was one of its most bankable ideas.
Additionally, the reel feature popularized by TikTok has been adopted wholesale by Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram with great success. The only way TikTok could maintain popularity with its flagship feature was to abandon its gimmick of making each video short, which worked until the rest of the social media app landscape tragically followed suit.
The resemblance of all popular apps to each other might be convenient, but it’s hard to get excited about considering how redundant it makes half of our libraries. After all, what reason do we have to keep multiple social media accounts when choosing one is based on nothing more than nostalgia?
There are even some instances where innovation is leaving the concept of traditional apps behind. Systems like ChromeOS have been weaning us onto web apps for ages, and it’s easy to see the appeal. They tend to be more flexible and exploit cross-platform compatibility in ways that native apps can only struggle to imitate poorly. This is the point where native app developers need to start showing off what makes their work special and worth public attention.
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