The Best iOS And Android Apps Of 2013
Congratulations, Planet Earth! We made it another 365 days without crashing into the sun. Go team! — It's the end of the year, and that means three things: booze, ridiculous sunglasses with numbers on them, and lists. Lots and lots of lists.
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch's year-end app roundup lands two weeks after Apple published its own iTunes and App Store Best of 2013 selections, so the outlet is offering a competing canon rather than breaking news — the value is editorial judgment layered on top of the platforms' official picks.
The format has history in this corpus: Apple's decision to name Instagram its iPhone App of the Year back in December 2011 showed how much distribution power a single year-end slot carries, and Gizmodo's April 2011 essential-apps guide established the periodic roundup as a staple. The unusually wide syndication here — TIME, PC Magazine, Co.Design, Cult of Mac and others all carrying it on or about January 1, 2014 — signals how much appetite there is for third-party curation alongside the stores' own lists.
First-order effects
- Apps named in the list get an immediate visibility boost at the start of 2014, the same mechanism that made Apple's 2011 Instagram pick valuable — though TechCrunch's endorsement carries no store-placement weight behind it.
Second-order effects
- Developers now have two distinct targets each December: Apple's and Google's official editorial teams for store placement, and press roundups like this one for credibility outside the walled gardens — different criteria, same submission season.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, year-end app curation hardens into an annual industry calendar event where the platforms' lists set the official record and tech media arbitrate it — making editorial relationships with app makers a standing part of app marketing.
The trend: App discovery is consolidating around an annual curation cycle in which platform-published best-of lists and independent press roundups together define which apps break through each year.