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Facebook Owns The 4 Most Downloaded Apps Of The Decade (mashable.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
History may not look kindly upon it, but the 2010s really was the decade of Facebook. From a report: A new report from analytics firm App Annie revealed the top 10 most downloaded mobile apps of the decade, and Facebook has an unsurprising grip on the whole operation. Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram were the four most downloaded apps across Android and iOS in the 2010s, and all four come from the same company. It is, if nothing else, a clear view of just how much Facebook dominated our daily lives from 2010 to 2019. Its flagship app and Messenger spin-off both have user counts in the billions, while Instagram and WhatsApp are household names.
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Facebook Owns The 4 Most Downloaded Apps Of The Decade More

Facebook Owns The 4 Most Downloaded Apps Of The Decade

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  • Doesn't that come pre-installed on almost every phone now?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Luckily I don't have it on my CAT S61.

  • Billions of flies must be right (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @10:04AM (#59528208)

    Shit is beautiful.

  • This may count the devices which come with them preinstalled, as have been all the phones I've had in the past 5-6 years. I don't want them and I have to go to great lengths to disable and/or remove the preinstalled apps. But I guess I must have been counted as having "downloaded" them.

    • I was wondering if pre-installed would count.... And also updates. Since most stock phones come with Facebook installed and undeletable. So most people even if they don't use Facebook will have it and have it downloading updates every few weeks for forever.
  • I really don't get it and I will die and still not getting it. The advances in web-based interfacing on mobiles these days have made most apps appsolutely obsolete.

    • that's why Facebook redirect the "message" button to the play store when they detect you are viewing the page from a phone. They know you can use the web page just fine, but want you to download their messenger anyways.

      Fortunately, Slimsocial bypasses that.

      • Then you go to the browser menu and tell it to get the desktop web page, from which you can use the web messenger interface.

        • of course but then you get the desktop version which is hard to use on a tiny phone.
          If their messenger is so good, they shouldn't have to force it down our throat like that and people would still install it, isn't it?

    • Apps can't be adblocked that easily.

    • Oblig XKCD [xkcd.com]

      Despite some of us Old Guys who just doesn't want to face it. HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript running in a updated web browser is really an excellent method for Application Deployment and UI. And it is far superior to the days of VB Programs having to run in Windows where each bit of work you needed to do needed to be installed often ran as administer, required a slew a DLL that could fight with other apps, with your data always on the verge of being gone. Or using a Terminal software that requir

    • I'm no expert but I believe that apps can integrate better with the underlying OS that a web page can and do things that can't be done from a web page. But yes, I agree that it's annoying having to use apps that offer no advantadges over a web site.
      There're some sites I visit once in a while but for which I don't want to bother with installing an app so I just visit the sites from my phone browser and most of the time is fine but some of them really pester you to download the app (Reddit for example).

    • Apps can snoop and exfiltrate way more of your personal data.

  • Not so sure there (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @10:13AM (#59528234)

    Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram were the four most downloaded apps across Android and iOS in the 2010s, and all four come from the same company.

    Didn't Facebook buy WhatsApp and Instagram? They didn't come from the same company, they're just owned by it.

    • FB rapes the users of those services for data just the same. So it goes a little bit beyond “just owning them”.

  • The current decade ends at the end of 2020, not 2019.

    Yes: I know that I will probably down voted by those who think that a new decade starts when the penultimate digit changes. There was not a year zero, AD (Anno Domini) [wikipedia.org] started with year 1, so decades start when the last digit is '1' not '0'.

    • Yeah, that was my first thought as well, and is technically correct (the best kind of correct). But the word can also refer to any arbitrary contiguous ten year period - one can “look back on the past decade” at any time, not just years that end in zero.

    • Why are you arbitrarily choosing to start counting at the Common Era, though? The decade ends in 2023 if I started counting in 1994.

    • Is it time again for this pedantry?

    • Don't be like that. Who cares if there was no year 0? Going with "same digits except the last one" just makes more sense.
    • You may be technically right, but for practical purposes, decade alignment is typically when the tens digit increments. Similarly, most people didn't celebrate 2001 as the start of a new millennium.

      • I was thinking we could work a 'metric system' angle into this thread. Did you know that when the French revolutionaries decreed the Metric System, they also started the year counter over? For a few years of the Republic coins were minted 'the year 1' 'the year 3' and so on. Only part of the 'arbitrary new system' edict took hold, though. While the beheadings were kicking in, they gave up on the calendar year renumbering.

    • You could also define the first decade to be years NULL to 9, with the second decade starting at 10 and ending dec 31 19. Much, much easier than to start decades a year late because over 2000 years ago we didn't start counting at 0 like we should have.

  • Dominated YOUR life, maybe (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @10:21AM (#59528258)
    Speak for yourself. Facebook is just an advertising platform for me.

  • Glad to have none of them installed (Score:3)

    by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @10:34AM (#59528296)

    They are bloated, slow, and seriously, who's the idiot who thought it could be a good idea to bypass the OS' notification system and display those circles in front of everything else? Facebook applications are a text book example of how not to do things.

    • If you still have to endure these apps (because that's what your family and friends all use among them and don't see why they should install yet another different app (e.g.: you try to move them to Matrix) just to talk to you):

      WhatsApp:
      - "Settings" -> "Notifications (Message, group & call tones)" -> uncheck all "Pop up notifications"
      Now you only get OS' notifications instead of the big pop-up chat box.

      Facebook Messenger:
      - Install com.facebook.mlite "Facebook Messenger Lite" [google.com] (instead of com.faceboo

    • Facebook applications are a text book example of how not to do things.

      Giving the user choices to do something traditionally or do something in a different way which some people find beneficial is an example of how not to do something? Are you a UX designer for Google maps by any chance? What other features do you think users should arbitrarily no longer have access to?

      As for the bloat, yes Facebook is a bloated mess. They also have Facebook Lite, an application that works just as well and is only 12MB, and Neither WhatsApp nor Instagram can be considered bloated by any use of

      • Giving the user choices is good. But I doubt many people actually want the balloon Facebook notifications. They just didn't bother to remove them.
        Imagine if you have 20 applications installed and each of them has a different, obtrusive, notification method. It would be a mess.

  • Since you need both to reproduce the functionality of the website and if you *don't* download Messenger, the Facebook app will continually nag you to.

    That is symptomatic of why I don't have Facebook on my phone. I have an account because the alternative would be being out of touch with my extended family, which uses Facebook to keep in touch. That's the legitimate side of Facebook. My problem with the Facebook app is that it not only tracks you, it tries to *shape your behavior*. That's the ultimate *fi

  • And the most uninstalled app goes to? (Score:3)

    by kiehlster ( 844523 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @10:44AM (#59528340) Homepage
    I'd really like to see the other side of that coin. Does anyone track uninstall activity?
    • One does not simply uninstall Facebook.

    • What benefit is that metric? Is this another one of those "I came here just to say I don't do something" posts? There's literally no information which can be gained by knowing uninstalls because it doesn't track how or why something was installed in the first place. Was it a user who got the app pre-installed, was it an accidental install, was it a trial run that didn't go well, was it someone being pissed off and abandoning the app, was it someone cleaning their device? How does it compare to a user no lon

  • My phone comes with one of those. I remove it anyway. Seriously, at this point using social media is adjacent to being a traitor to democracy and liberty. Stop being part of the problem.

    • The problem isn't the tool. But how we use it.
      Social Media can be used for a force of good too. But Facebook has been sloppy in getting rid of the fakers who convince people off of a false narrative.

    • Alternative Universe: AOL became the internet. Guess they didn't need to control the access points; people are foolish enough to be pulled in by laziness.

      The web is being replaced with a wall garden... computers are too... freedom is just too much work; long live the defaults?

  • 'Decade' is ten years, and this decade is the teens, next decade (2020-2029 inclusive) is the twenties. No-one will refer to 2021-2030 as anything. You're technically right there was no year zero, but neither was there a year 1 either. No-one called it "Year 1" in any language at the time.

  • despite everything, all the bad press they get, they are still the top 4 most downloaded apps.
    no reason to think they will change their behaviour at this point, nobody cares!

  • Que impresionante como ha crecido esa plataforma de tal manera. En estos tiempo cualquier cosa se puede Ver Online [www.123movies.community], y no conforme con esa, también descargarlo, en mis tiempo no existía tanta tecnología y uno debia ir a una biblioteca para poder obtener información. No estoy criticando la tecnología, mas bien la agradezco y espero que siga creciendo para hacernos la vida mas fácil, Gracias por el Post! es sumamante Interesante!
    • mire, no tengo ningun idea porque halbas espanol aqui. La mayoridad de la gente en Slastdot son fucktards de estados unidos que no entienden que hay otra paises en nuestra mundo. Tambien ellos tienen la responsibility por esta tipo de applicacion data mining.
  • Everything today can be achieved thanks to the social networks and pages that allow file downloads. As well as Watch online [www.123movies.community]. Thanks for the Post! very interesting!

  • It's clear that the current "no immediate economic harm" standard is allowing unhealthy concentration in tech.

    The real problem is that this has become a standard business model: do something innovative, don't worry about scaling on your own, just do enough to get bought by a big existing player.

    Maybe we should forbid companies from buying entities that are ... less than 1% of their size? Granted, the details are a bear.

    • Nah. We just need the kangaroo courts to enforce the existing antitrust laws in the spirit in which they were written. Alas, that would require some judges and government lawyers to give up the suitcases full of cash in a dark parking lot that they so enjoy receiving.

  • Yesterday is was a pay walled link and today it's a broken link. What ever happened to the old /. I knew and loved?

  • You could say that Facebook's apps are the most popular apps that aren't important enough to be included on every phone out of the box.

  • if people knew the number of times I have deleted the app...and then got the itch and reinstalled.
  • still cant stop laughing at how fast tumblr became irrelevant XD
  • Yep, they are mining data about millions of people and need to be regulated.

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