[Air-L] Question: Do 'apps' have 'seasons'?

sally sally at sally.com
Wed Mar 29 11:55:58 PDT 2017


Hi Ravi,

I realize your question now, and that my answer looked at a different issue with apps: from the dev standpoint.

My answer is that for app developers, there are definite seasons and they are dictated by big market events for demos, which are the ones I listed previously and then some.

As for seasons within apps, I would look to Japanese apps. Japan cares a lot about seasonal things, and this may migrate into app development (for example, even the chocolate sold in Combinis is "seasonal").

> I wonder about the constant barrage of a-temporal mediated experiences.

This is an excellent observation and one I hope you develop into publication.

Sally 


On Mar 29, 2017, at 11:10 AM, Ravindra Mohabeer wrote:

> Thank you for your reply, Jill. 
> 
> That was a bad oversight on the part of Snapchat with the mother/father’s day switch. In a way it kind of follows the trend from advertising that occurred throughout the 80s and 90s that a colleague of mine called the realization for the need to provide a ‘customization to account for difference’ when advertising firms became global - there is a famous case study of a failure of Kelloggs' in India and Coca-Cola when they tried to use literal translations of the same ad the world over and ended up seeing a dip in sales instead of stability or growth. 
> 
> Your reply does account for some of my question but I also wondered about the idea of cyclical or almost ‘circadian’ use of things - in the absence of ‘seasons’ are we required to be ‘always on’ and never have down time to collect ourselves or digest, reflect, and reconsider?  It’s always summer somewhere. 
> 
> I think your notation of what gets downloaded when (AppStore stuff) hits more on my idea - do somethings get used for a time, dropped, and then re-appropriated in a seasonal cycle and if so, does that assert a ‘global/universal seasonality’ or does it, as you describe, reflect geo-social degree of difference that reflects the regional seasonality of things that is, perhaps, undermined by the global/urban nature of digital living?
> 
> While I know there is no direct effect of ‘apps’ and such creating this dynamic on their own, I wonder about the constant barrage of a-temporal mediated experiences.
> 
> Again, thanks for your reply.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mar 28, 2017, at 10:50 PM, Jill Walker Rettberg <Jill.Walker.Rettberg at uib.no> wrote:
>> 
>> I would imagine the global nature of the internet makes seasons less important for apps - and even for memes, Snapchat filters, the types of stories you see on BuzzFeed or Reddit.
>> 
>> Seasons and rituals are so different around the globe.
>> 
>> You do certainly see seasons in Snapchat filters, Facebook prompts etc, and usually US-centric seasons often with little cultural awareness of the seasons not being global. Thanksgiving, Black Friday, American Mothers/Fathers day, College graduation weekend, spring break, Memorial Day are all examples of holidays not celebrated globally or even in Europe, which in many ways is culturally close to the US (and in the northern hemisphere so seasonally aligned).
>> 
>> The silliest example of failed seasonal globalist I've seen was Snapchat sending out a Happy Fathers Day message to Norwegian users - on Norwegian MOTHERS day. Ha.
>> 
>> You're probably thinking more of which apps are marketed, though? Is there a way to download data from the App Stores over time to test this? You may be able to generate graphs from https://www.appannie.com/ as well.
>> 
>> Jill
>> 
>> Sent from my phone
>> 
>> On 28 Mar 2017, at 20:45, Ravindra Mohabeer <mohabeerlists at gmail.com<mailto:mohabeerlists at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello All,
>> 
>> I find myself with a rather crudely formed idea through which I am questioning whether day-to-day ‘apps’ (or ‘Internet experiences’) taken in a broad interpretation exist in a temporal sense that can be described as ‘having seasons’?
>> 
>> If retailers have seasons (artificial or ‘real’) that reflect/create behavioural patterns - e.g. people tend to renovate in the Spring, buy certain things around certain holidays, etc. - do ‘apps' follow similar seasonal patterns? Or, coming from a media studies perspective I have noted an (admittedly anecdotal but) immense shift in how media seasons are defined, I wonder if any potential a-seaonality of the 'app world’ has upset temporal expectations of the seasonality of mediated experiences.
>> 
>> I mean seasons in both a climatic (i.e. spring, summer, fall, winter) and social sense (blockbuster, holiday, shopping, election, ‘back to school,’ new release, etc.) - and as an interplay of the climatic and social dimensions concurrently within the separate backdrop of ‘innovation cycles,’ release dates, and updates.
>> 
>> Obviously there are time-limited ‘apps' (like contest apps or event-based apps), but I wonder whether there are ebbs and flows of general ‘app' use, particularly platform apps of the social media ilk, or of the organization/productivity type for example, that can be temporally described as seasonal?
>> 
>> I realize that my terms of reference are rather imperfectly formed (app, season, etc.) but I did that on purpose since I am rather more interested in your interpretation/application to whatever related construct as it explores the changing nature of the concept of seasonality/temporality and [new] mediated experiences.
>> 
>> Just curious. Any thoughts?
>> Ravi
>> 
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Ravindra N. Mohabeer, PhD
>> Vancouver Island University
>> Nanaimo, BC  CANADA
>> 
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