Another great mobile study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project focusing on apps. For today’s Trends post, we are looking at what types of apps people download.
Apps serve many functions, from communication to information gathering, productivity and entertainment. The current survey asked app downloaders if they had ever downloaded apps for any of nine different purposes. Overall, apps that provide regular updates about everyday information (news, weather, sports, or stocks) and those that help people communicate are the most commonly downloaded. —from Pew Report
As government builds apps and mobile strategies, it’s important to understand how people use apps and how government information and services will best meet the mobile citizen’s needs.
**reposted from the Mobile Gov Blog from the Office of Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies at GSA**
Interesting. Have you seen a list of most downloaded government apps? I’d be curious how that fits in to the list.
For example,
Baby Names apps – category – topic you are interested in
TSA – information about event (your flight time)
USAJOBS – work related task
Most city apps seem to be #1 – mostly about news and updates about city
This is great data for government to consider when developing their own apps…and government seems to be well-positioned to put immensely valuable data in the palms of people’s hands as they conduct their daily lives.
To Steve’s question below,my guess is that the IRS2Go app got a lot of downloads…as well as product recalls and alternate fuel locators.
Related story on Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/67267.html
I don’t know of a list of the most downloaded government apps–especially as some cross platforms. We do know that the NASA app, which is the granddaddy of them all from Oct 2009 (happy toddlerhood!), has been very popular. Folks love space and NASA has done a very good job.
The IRS2go application had terrific timing–and we know that within the first few weeks after their January release they had more than 100,000 downloads on both the iPhone and on the Android platforms.
The National Science Foundation’s Science 360 for the iPad has had a half-million downloads! It’s a beautiful app that takes advantage of the multi-media features of the tablet. It didn’t hurt that the Apple staff featured it as an app in the iTunes store. That’s a traffic driver!
BTW, you can see the apps I mentioned in the earlier comment at apps.usa.gov. Lots of inspiration there!
Cool list – does Apple (I know there are other marketplaces too) have a top 20 government apps section?
Would be cool to have top gov’t apps like our social media leaderboard – https://www.govloop.com/page/government-social-media-leader
A little competition is always fun 🙂