There are a lot of popular mobile apps out there these days. It feels as though every day I hear of a new popular app that is marketing itself as the best for different niches and purposes. While there are a great many I could choose from to review, I chose to narrow down my choices by looking at my own phone and what I regularly use for inspiration and content creation as I am in the design field. With that in mind, I will focus on Instagram and Pinterest, which are both hugely popular mobile apps and are opened almost daily on my own and utilized.

Instagram is used for a few different reasons but is mainly known as a photo and video-sharing platform that helps connect users to friends, family, and fans or supporters. Some use this platform simply as a way to see what is happening in their friends or families’ lives and enjoy sharing fun videos they find on stories or chatting through DM’s. Other people use it as a way to promote their service, product, or hobby to the world as well as be inspired by similar people in the community. Increasingly this is becoming a popular place for that, specifically with video-related content (reels) and advertising. The target audience for Instagram tends to be the Millennial and GenZ community, typically within the range of 16-30 years old.

Instagram makes (a lot) of money through its app and the millions of users that are on it every single day. Revenue streams include a picture and video ads, the newer “shop marketplace” feature, as well as branded content ads. In simple terms, they make their money through advertising because people pay them to promote and there is never a lack of customers for them. 

Pinterest is another visual-focused mobile app but is set up differently than Instagram. People can follow each other, share their content (which is always very aesthetically pleasing to view,) and save inspiration to boards on their profiles. I personally love using Pinterest because you can have as many boards as you would like and save all the inspiration pics and video clips that I want to be able to go back and refer to. There is always new content being added to your own customized home page and you can also make your pins for others to save. This is a great way to promote your product or service to others and direct them to a website, storefront, etc. Pinterest’s target audience tends to be mainly women ages 30-49 years old, however, it can vary greatly because of the wealth of content for different niches. 

Similarly to Instagram, Pinterest makes a lot of its money from advertising streams as well. Promoted pins are the big one here, where users can pay to have their pins and accounts advertised to a wider audience and hopefully attract followers and buyers. They also have a “buy it” button that makes purchasing through the app and storefronts easier than before.

Overall, I personally enjoy these two mobile apps a lot and have benefited from the wealth of information, inspiration, and content that is daily available. It is clear that millions of other users also benefit greatly from these apps and it doesn’t look like there is any chance of them becoming less popular any time soon. 

https://fakeclients.com/blog/the-best-graphic-design-apps

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/instagram-age-demographics

https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-demographics/

https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/pinterest-statistics

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4472656-how-does-instagram-make-money-for-facebook

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4469657-5-different-ways-pinterest-makes-money