If there is anything about the power of mobile technology that has captured our imagination, it is certainly not its ability to let you approve the timesheet of your staff at work! Instead it is mobile technology's ability to let you socialize, connect, interact, shop, flirt and love and do so anytime and anywhere using nothing more than a little device in your pocket called a mobile phone.

 

Today there are over 2.5 million different mobile apps available on the Apple AppStore, Google Play Store, Amazon's App Store, the Blackberry App World and the Windows Phone Store combined.

 

These apps have collectively transformed our lifestyles and our day to day habits and behavior in a way that was hard to imagine just a decade ago. And in doing so these apps are transforming, and in some cases destroying the fortunes of virtually every organization on the planet.

 

In the late 90s and early 2000s, sites such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook introduced us to a whole new way of socializing by using our personal computers. Today Facebook is finding that more people use Facebook from their mobile device than from their personal computer. While Facebook adjusts its revenue model to the dynamics of a smart phone wielding user base, other social media ventures such as Twitter and WhatsApp were founded on the assumption that they will be used primarily from a smart phone!

 

The principle of "Publish or Perish" that has guided careers of academicians has acquired a very different meaning in the world of mobile apps. It has begun to guide the fortunes of entire corporations.

 

 

Chocolate milk

 

Like chocolate milk we sub-consciously expect to derive a certain level of "continued satisfaction" from our apps every time we use them. If the idea behind the app fails to hold our attention, the app is as good as non-existent to us.

 

This measure of "usefulness" is different for different kinds of mobile apps.