Knowing Where To Post Your Status. Passion & Purpose. Building a Mobile App Is Not a Mobile Strategy - Jason Gurwin. By Jason Gurwin | 3:35 PM November 21, 2011 Everyone wants their own mobile application. In the last year, I have heard this consistently. In fact, mobile analytics firm Distimo claims 91 of the top 100 brands have their own mobile app (up from 51 just 18 months ago). On the surface this sounds great, right? Most brands treat their mobile applications as an advertisement. Building a mobile strategy is more than just having your own application. Here are four things to remember as you consider a mobile strategy — and some reasons why you should expand your mobile strategy past just your mobile app. You don’t launch a television station so you can market your brand on television.
My advice is this: It’s ok to have your own app, but your entire mobile marketing strategy should not stop at building one. Take a deep breath and look at the broader picture. This post is part of a series of blog posts by and about the new generation of purpose-driven leaders. Stop Making Apps. There are a bunch of iPhone apps I own though I have no clue what they do. These apps include but aren’t limited to; FLUD, Apptitude, Cartoonatic, Can’t Wait! , Punch, Pah, Prize Claw, Traveler, Concur, Jajah, Fast Customer, Pimple Popper and many more whose names I can’t even remember. Occupying my valuable homescreen real estate are also a bunch of apps whose purpose I remember only because they were built by people I know or am friends with, but that I sadly never use. And in some cases I really wish I did, because it would make my friends happy and the world a better place.
The few apps that I actually open daily (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare, Spotify, Reminders, Safari, Messenger, and Yammer sadly enough) are securely fastened to my homescreen. For those relegated to the “app ghetto” I usually either substitute Google or SMS because I’ve forgotten that I’ve downloaded them and am too lazy to swipe past my first screen. So if you can’t beat them join them. Fly Or Die: Can Batch Find Its Own Path Among The Photo Apps? Does the world need another photo-sharing app? That is the question John Biggs and I debate in this episode of Fly or Die (watch the video above). We take a look at one of the latest photo apps to hit iTunes, Batch, which launched ten days ago and is currently one of the Top 50 photo apps for the iPhone (currently at No. 48). The mobile app is a new product from DailyBooth, whose CEO Brian Pokorny joins us after we each give our verdicts on the app.
Batch does one thing really well: it lets you group photos together from your iPhone into albums and share them with friends via the app itself, Facebook, Twitter, or email. Biggs thinks the batching feature will become part of Instagram at some point and, thus, you will no longer need Batch. The sharing model is also key to what makes Batch useful.
In my mind, Batch is less like Instagram and more like a cross between Path and what Color was supposed to be.