The most downloaded mobile app as of July 2020 is TikTok. TikTok is the leading app in short-form videos (15 seconds or less), which can be about anything and everything. The target demographic is anyone between the ages of 13 and 40, with an approximate revenue in 2019 of $177 million. The app is well-loved by people of most age-groups, although high-school and college-age students seem to make up the majority of users. It has overwhelmingly high ratings worldwide, with over 5 million users rating it at 5 stars. Users can make the most from their experience with the app through interest-related filters, from pets to food to plain old funny skits.
Despite it’s incredible popularity, TikTok has faced some controversy in its’ short life. It was launched in 2016, and in 2019, it was briefly banned in India (the country where most of the app’s users are located) for concerns over ‘morality’. Officials were afraid that the video content would make it easier for predators to target underage children. TikTok managed to get the ban lifted by appealing its’ case, and with the promise that monitoring and security protocols would be tightened. The app is once again facing controversy in 2020, because of its’ ties to China. In face, very recently, it has announced that it will be joining other social media platforms, and will exit the Hong-Kong market in the coming days. It is unclear when this exit will happen as of right now.
Another popular app (which has garnered much more attention since the quarantine) is the adventure-based Randonautica app. Though not nearly as popular as a media giant like TikTok (through which it actually amassed its’ first wave of followers), it has made waves in the market as a means to provide entertainment that is social-distancing approved. It launched in 2019, and has since gained a following of over a million. Since the app gained most of its’ attention from TikTok, the demographics are approximately the same, between 13 and 40, with most users being college and high school aged. Revenue for the app is actually unclear, though that may be due to it being too new to have an approximated value as of yet.
Of course, when talking about Randonautica, it would be a crime to not mention the…crime. The app has gained a somewhat dour reputation because users often report coming across creepy or unsettling things during their adventures, from abandoned cars in the middle of forests to actual human remains. The creators of the app have vehemently denied any prior knowledge, and have compared the app to a modern-day Ouija Board (as in, a parlor game made for entertainment purposes), but a group of teens did make headlines after their adventure took them to a location at which they discovered real human remains. It bears mentioning that the app works by accessing your devices’ location, and generates random coordinates within a desired radius. The ‘Randonaut’ is supposed to think of an ‘intention’ and then go to the location in search of the point of interest. To me, this functions like ‘if you only think about yellow cars, the only cars you’ll see are the yellow ones’, but in the case of the teens, I feel they certainly got the scare of a lifetime. And, as the app continues to grow in popularity, many users are reporting more and more strange findings. As a side note, I am a Randonaut myself, and have never come across anything in my adventures, unless a broken lamppost counts!
Works Cited
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/#3
https://sensortower.com/ios/us/tiktok-inc/app/tiktok-make-your-day/835599320/overview
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/seattle-human-remains-tiktok-randonautica
https://www.pockettactics.com/randonautica/explained
https://www.hauntjaunts.net/randonautica-experimenting-with-a-new-way-to-jaunt/