It’s the end of the year and Nielsen ratings are back in vogue. The list of top apps of 2016 in the US is out. The top spots have been occupied by, not unpredictably, the house of Facebook and Google. The first and second places have been occupied by Facebook and Facebook Messenger followed by five products from Google — YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Play and Gmail. In the last three spots are Instagram, Apple Music and Amazon App.
Facebook raced to the top with an amazing 146 million average users. Messenger records an average of 129 million users.
A noteworthy feature of this year’s stocktaking lies at the bottom of the list. An e-shopping window’s surge to the legion of most popular social media apps is worth a mention. Techcrunch writes, “We already know that e-commerce sites broke records during this holiday shopping season, and Amazon accounted for a huge proportion of those numbers — as much as 37 per cent, according to recent reports. But people are clearly doing more mobile shopping throughout the year, Nielsen found, as Amazon’s mobile app saw a 43 per cent increase in terms of monthly average uniques versus 2015.” Amazon is strong on the 10th place with 6,55,11,000 average users.
This is what Cnet has to say, “Facebook might not be as cool as Snapchat, but it still has the most popular app in the US, according to a Nielsen report for 2016 published Wednesday. In a year where Pokemon Go smashed App Store records, social media still remains the dominant force on people’s phones.”
From the Cnet review, one more thing is clear. While Facebook walked away with the first place, in terms of reach, it is still behind Google. The social media ace claims to have 1.8 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Cnet has listed out the most popular apps on iOS and Android platforms. Viber, Dark Sky, Fitbit and PicsArt Photo Studio being fitted into iOS, the Android playmates are topped by Whatsapp Messenger followed by Dark Sky, Fitbit, PicsArt Photo Studio and Spotify.
