Guerrilla thinking

Some of us guerrilla thinkers were having dinner a couple of nights ago with some top-of-market agency guys and we were debating whether mobile Apps will sooner or later replace websites at all or not.

In other words the question was the usual one: is the web dead? Will mobile apps and content definitely kill any effort to build up our own multiple and various little world in the web galaxy? Are we doomed to a future when in order to check, watch, buy anything we will have to download or worse BUY an app?

This latter question is pretty important because what many journalists, critics and guru never point out while discussing the possible scenarios is that the difference between apps and what we call “free web” is that while a website is open, free and search engine friendly, apps are not.  Yes most apps are free but they are downloadable from a market you access from specific devices.

And you gotta pay for them. You can’t just enter a public place (hotel, school, bar, restaurant…) and use their pc to check things on your apps, because in order to do that, you gotta have them right there in your little, cool, smart, fashion phone.

Think about it. That’s mainly why very popular apps like instagram are now trying to reverse the same experience and content you have in you device on a pc-level experience.

To be device-bound has been the main force of the apps, but this is also the most important threat to the growth of their business.

If all the content is in the cloud, application should be in the cloud as well, not JUST to be downloaded but to be used for free And that’s basically the web.

A popular device apps will more and more require a fully functional and device-indipendent version of itself or in the medium distance its run will be over.

Of course the opposite is also true. And Facebook is a good example.
Out of a web platform they have created a mobile app to grant users a seamless FB experience while on the go.
Why shouldn’t the opposite be as much necessary for any appstore or android market popular app?

Why can’t I take advantage of let’s say cool hipstamatic filters or photo collage cool effects on my mac as much as I daily do on my iPhone?

Unless we believe that in the nearer future people will be using a single smart mobile and appstore-bound device throughout their daily experience of work and leisure, it is really important to find a good answer to this question. Are we absolutely sure that in the nearer future tablets and smartphones will kill desk/laptop navigation?

But there’s one more thing (oops, that sounds creepy, doesn’t it?): the content of the apps is vertical, whereas the web is horizontal.
When I browse an app (on a device I bought and that’s the only thing that lets me access that, as said above) I browse a barb wired little world. Any connection to other sources of information, other content requires my smartphone to pause, switch to another application (most of the time a WEB browser) and in the end break a stream of thoughts, emotions and interests that brought me to that place.

While clicking on a link in a browser to another website doesn’t change my experience of using my device, switching from an application to another one seriously gets people dizzy and can have serious repercussions on your business.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

In order to maximize APPS, market leaders should improve the way apps dialogue one with the other and make the browsing and hypertexting among them easier and seamless. On the other hand they should be also consider to release the same apps experience on the web, to make it accessible from any device I want.

Until that moment (that could be actually closer than we think) websites will keep on being competitive and demand their right to exist and apps will be mostly dedicated to geotagged services and infos.