Great points about apps and the web in this article.
Apps compete with the web for dominance over where people get their content. Apps as games and tools are perfect, but apps for content are not. Content is best on the web, because the web is built for sharing content. The web is open! The web is consolidated and instant and accessible (meaning that any device/browser/screen size/location/etc can already access the web and you can update it anytime and all users see the update instantaneously). The web is also accessible via the defining url. Meaning that it’s a required standard that all assets and bits of content have an address. You can take this address and share it and return to it easily, apps – not so much. You want to share an experience or idea from an app with a friend (sure, some have a process built in), you first check to see if their device has this app available, they want to go through the steps of finding the app and then installing it (likely having to pay money) and then you send them a link have to explain how to get to where the magic happened.
Newfangled, a web agency I respect for being very smart has a great article about this. It was then moved into the basis for a chapter in their ‘The Strategic Web Designer’ Book. I highly recommend them both!
