Monetization of Social Networking Apps Taking Off on iOS

[MacRumors]

Social networking apps have climbed nine places year-on-year in the App Annie rankings of monthly revenues (via The Next Web), moving from 12th place last January to third place in January 2013.

As of January 2013, the Social Networking category ranked third in monthly revenues, behind only Games and Productivity in the iOS App Store. And that's up 87% compared to January 2012 monthly revenues, representing 3% of total iOS App Store revenue. Its growth is impressive and nowhere near its ceiling.

The study data shows that the messaging and dating apps are registering as the most significant revenue generators among social networking apps, with LINE, WhatsApp Messenger, and Zoosk leading the way in various countries.

Notably, Apple's Find My Friends made a climb from 17th place to 2nd in downloads, while Facebook Messenger overtook the main Facebook app to take first place. App Annie attributes the rise of Find My Friends to the App Store splash screen introduced in iOS 6 that encourages users to download several free apps from Apple, including Find My Friends.

As is true for many aspects of Apple's business, China was one of the fastest-growing markets for social networking apps, with the United States and China now combining to account for half of all social networking downloads worldwide.

Article Link: Monetization of Social Networking Apps Taking Off on iOS

 

[AzoozG]

If anyone still thinks "Find My Friends" is a good social app, I think he's going to be using it more often.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

If anyone still thinks "Find My Friends" is a good social app, I think he's going to be using it more often.

Well, there's people who want to know where their friends are, so they can post a comment on Facebook or Twitter when their friends go to naughty places.

 

[RedTomato]

I use Find My Friends quite often with my partner. We have two kids & don't work fixed hours, so sometimes it's good for my phone to let me to know when she leaves work. Also in case of travel problems I can ask my phone to let me know when she's nearly home so I can heat up food / put the kettle on for a nice cuppa of tea for her.

I do agree it can be a bit creepy though.

 

[street.cory]

Find My Friends works wonders for me and my friends especially on Spring Break trip. Also it's kind of nice to just check and see if one of my friends have left work (variable hours) so I don't bother them with text messages to ask if they wanted to come over while they're working. And besides, it's really easy to just turn off the service temporarily

 

[gmanist1000]

I use Find My Friends quite often with my partner. We have two kids & don't work fixed hours, so sometimes it's good for my phone to let me to know when she leaves work. Also in case of travel problems I can ask my phone to let me know when she's nearly home so I can heat up food / put the kettle on for a nice cuppa of tea for her.

I do agree it can be a bit creepy though.

Honestly I don't find it creepy at all. It's very easy to turn off the tracking so there's nothing to really worry about.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I use Find My Friends quite a bit with all of my friends. We often go on large trips with a dozen or so friends. Generally that means taking at least two cars, and keeping track of where the other cars are can be helpful. We often split into smaller groups when we get where we're going and so it helps for grouping back together later on.

It would be creepy if you allowed more people to track you around, but the dozen or so people you actually hang out with a few times a week doesn't seem creepy at all, to me.

I wonder how this chart would look if you divided the amount of money taken in in each category by the amount of apps in the category. IE, on average will games actually generate more money than productivity apps?

Also, it's not even remotely fair to compare third party app downloads to Apple's app downloads. I feel like Apple should remove themselves from the rankings and just stick their apps in some other prominent space (or just have them come preinstalled. iLife being bundled with OS X has always been a huge selling point for Macs... why not do the same thing on iOS?)

 

[8ate8]

Why is facebook messenger #1? Has anyone here used it? The app doesn't offer anything that the facebook app itself can't do. I had it for about 24 hours before I deleted it because it was pretty much a duplicate app.