There are approximately six billion people in the world. Of those six billion, one billion have a Facebook (News - Alert) account. Of those one billion, 85.5 million are using Facebook’s mobile app each month. The first time I used Facebook on a mobile device was in 2010, when I got my very first Internet-enabled BlackBerry Bold. Since then, I’ve probably opened the mobile Facebook app at least one million times.
Recent findings from comScore (News - Alert), an Internet technology measurement company, declared Facebook’s mobile app as the top app. It snatched the No. 1 position from Google Maps after replacing Google Maps with Apple (News - Alert) Maps on iOS 6. In addition to owning the top app audience ranking, the social network has consistently ranked at the top of mobile app engagement –Facebook accounts for 23 percent of time users spend on apps.
Images via comScore
Facebook may have grabbed the top spot, but half of the top 10 mobile apps with unique visitors are Google apps: Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Gmail and YouTube.
I’m surprised to see that Twitter (News - Alert) is missing from both of these lists – I think for the first year and a half I had a Twitter account I used the Web interface less than 20 times. I constantly used Twitter as my go-to mobile app to get real-time updates about what was happening at the time.
Facebook is always looking to expand its offerings and offer the most enhanced social experience to users. It recently unveiled its Graph Search, a personalized search engine based off information your Facebook friends share with you. It also took a shot into the mobile call recording world with an update to its Messenger app, allowing users to make free voice calls to other users of the app. The brand new voice recording capability is, however, the main part of this update. While it isn't by any means a complete call recording solution, it does allow users to send and receive short voice messages up to one minute in length. The idea is for this to function not so much as a voicemail system, but as a way to supplement text chatting for the times you just can't spare a hand for typing.
Facebook also recently launched a new app called BookScout, which is designed to be the “Facebook community for book lovers.” Created by Random House, the app seeks to help people find the right books to read, people to talk about books with and sharing of favorite books with friends.
Amanda Close, Random House’s senior vice president of digital marketplace development, says socially driven recommendation process is key to the app’s success.
