A recent NYT article profiled the proliferation of apps and highlighted a bunch of startups at all stages of development. We are seeing a lot of activity in this space in Austin, especially twitter and iphone apps. I haven’t heard much noise about the Pre yet because there just aren’t enough handsets out there to drive developers to build apps for it (yet). With 43% of internet users spending most of their time surfing the web on social networks, there are more and more APIs to build apps on too. For web apps, it helps that all browsers now have tabbing. The successful apps will build on existing networks, increase productivity and entertain. If they do only one of these things, they won’t get meaningful traction and will eventually die. P.S. Don’t build apps for the already-irrelevant Myspace (second chances don’t exist on the now web, ask Cuil).
