New Mobile Apps Are All About the Group

Are we serving groups by our iFacturas apps? We certainly serve small companies and freelancers. But groups. I think we still have to rethink this.

A post from .com by has the whole story. Here is a part:

In case you needed any further evidence that groups will be big for mobile apps in 2011, you need only look as far as Facebook’s recent acquisition of group-messaging app Beluga. Beluga provides users with the ability to chat privately, with the express aim of helping them plan outings or share info and photos. Sound familiar? It should if you’ve ever been a BlackBerry Messenger user. Shortly following the announcement of Facebook’s acquisition of Beluga, the possibility of RIM expanding the availability of BBM to other platforms was floated, suggesting the BlackBerry-maker isn’t eager to cede ground in this territory. But if Facebook does group messaging right, even a platform-agnostic BBM can’t compete.
Groups are hot, and not just because they’re getting a lot of hype. It makes sense for app makers to appeal to user groups instead of individuals, for reasons of adoption and relevance. A group-based app is likely to attract at least one more user for every individual it attracts, for instance, since users will want someone to use the app with. And if apps can attract users in batches, they can better evaluate the social matrix within which each one operates, making for more relevant personalized recommendations and more successful advertising and marketing campaigns. Users win, too, because the group provides continued usefulness for the apps in question, lessening the chance that a purchased or downloaded app will only get used or twice before being banished to the land of misfit software.
This year is the year of the group when it comes to mobile software. Developers, and users, need to ask themselves just one question: Are you in, or are you out?