Apps…

I’ve been working on my current assignment of locating and describing a company that has a successful Facebook site.  My choice was Pizza Hut.  They have over a million fans and are very creative with their posts and catchy comments that help to keep people interested.  They also have a unique feature to add “the killer app for your appetite” to your iPhone to be able to order pizza instantly.

This brings me to the core of this blog post.  I don’t have an iPhone, and to be completely honest don’t get the whole “app” thing.  It seems to me that everyone offers an app to download to your phone. 

  

Obviously there are apps for games and music, but there are a whole slew of other apps available that I was unaware of.

A couple that I found interesting were:

-Weber’s On the Grill.  This app allows you to search over 290 classic Weber recipes.  You also get expert tips, instructional videos helpful ideas from celebrity chef Jamie Purviance.

-Babyphone.  This app is geared toward mommies and daddies.  “Just enter your home phone number or tap in a new number and place it next to your sleeping baby.  When iPhone hears your baby wake up, it calls you,” (Apple, http://www.apple.com/iphone/apps-for-everything/momsdads.html ).

There is even a “Carbon Footprint Calculator” app that offers an easy way to estimate how many trees are needed to offset your carbon footprint.  Apparently the users provides information about miles driven, airline travel, electricity usage, train travel, natural gas usage, oil heating, etc.  This is a very environmentally focuses app that was promoted around Earth Day.

Through this emerging media class I’ve learned about the importance and value of mobile marketing.

But I wonder, are people (like myself) who don’t have an iPhone being left out-of-the-loop when it comes to marketing?  How much emphasis really needs to be placed on mobile apps?  Is it possible that it is just a tech fad that will die out or be replaced by something better in the near future? Or are apps soon to become the norm (meaning people like myself WILL be left out of the loop if we don’t conform)?

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