In 2015, Natasha Singer published an article
titled Can't Put Down Your Device? That's
by Design in which it is clearly mentioned that some people in the world of
technology have started looking for techniques that encourage app users to stay
with it or to return to it now and then (Singer, 2015). In the meantime, Sean
Ellis from GrowthHackers.com is of the view that if we do not focus on using
great hacking techniques that drive the habitual usage of an application, then
the application may soon get out of the business. It means the app will be
disliked by the world’s users and may get banned permanently.
I think that what Natasha Singer is saying is
absolutely correct, as it is always important to find new ways or techniques to
keep an application or technology service up-to-date. If we do not do so, then
the app may get vanished, and its place will be taken by a far better, improved
and well-versed application. Natasha Singer achieves her goals by saying that
new techniques must be tried to convince the users to continue using the same
or new version of an application. In order to prove her viewpoint, we can give
an example of WhatsApp. It is a freeware, a messaging and voice application
owned by Facebook. It lets users send text messages and make voice calls
without any charges.
Though the alternatives to WhatsApp (Viber,
LINE, Hangouts, ChatON, and Tango) exist on the web, this application has
gained tremendous success and popularity all over the world. In order to keep
this application in competition, the developers (Jan Koum and Brian Acton)
opted for techniques that encouraged WhatsApp users to continue using the app. The
intended audience for this article was people who want to send messages and
make calls free of cost, which is wh WhatsApp was introduced to the world with
advanced and better features. For example, in August 2009, WhatsApp 2.0 was
released on the App Store for the iPhone, and in November 2014, a feature
called Read Receipts was added to the application, which is meant to alert the
sender when their messages are seen or read by the recipient.
References
Singer, N. (2015, December
05). Can't Put Down Your Device? That's by Design. Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/technology/personaltech/cant-put-down-your-device-thats-by-design.html
