Most apps that exist today were built to be used by millions, because that was the only math that worked. Developing software was expensive enough that you had to aim for the largest audience you could reach. The whole premise of building an app was getting a lot of people to use it so you could make money off it. That’s what made the investment of time and money worth it.

That constraint is gone. When building software costs an afternoon and a few dollars, building for an audience of one is perfectly rational.

A spectrum with room to fill#

Apps live on a spectrum of who they serve. On one end, personal apps: software built for yourself, by yourself. A script that texts you when your favorite coffee shop drops its prices. A dashboard that tracks your running routes against the weather. Something only you care about, and that’s fine because it cost you an afternoon.

Then hyperlocal apps: software for a neighborhood, a building, a school. A real-time map of which laundromats near you are free right now. A shared grocery list for your floor. The audience is dozens of people, maybe hundreds, but they’re all in the same physical place.

Between hyperlocal and planetary lies unfilled territory. Apps for a city, a region, a subculture scattered across geographies. These will fill in too.

Planetary apps sit on the other end. Google Maps, Wikipedia, the platforms we already think of when we hear “app.” They already exist and will continue to exist, but they’ll be outnumbered.

Outnumbered at the edges#

The prevailing manifestation of “app” has been the platform, the enterprise tool, the service built to capture a market. Not because that’s the natural shape of software, but because that was the only shape that justified building it.

The explosion changes the distribution. Personal and hyperlocal apps will vastly outnumber the ones we currently think of as typical. Not because those apps go away, but because the long tail of small, specific, deeply local software becomes economically viable. Every point on that spectrum is now a place where someone can build something useful, without needing to dominate a niche or justify a business plan.

See The Cambrian Explosion of Apps.