App analytics giant Apptopia has released aggregated session time data for the world’s leading apps.

Comms, socials and streams

The ‘time wasters’ label is most commonly applied to games, Apptopia’s figures shows that communication apps are taking up many more hours of users’ time.

WhatsApp tops the list for the most time spent in-app, with a staggering 85.21 million hours for the second quarter of 2018. WeChat and Messenger also get a guernsey, in second and fourth spots respectively.

The major social rank high too, with Facebook (#3), Instagram (#7) and Twitter (#8) all in the top ten.

Streaming apps like Pandora (#5), YouTube (#6) and Spotify (#10) also have strong showings. By their nature, these apps don’t demand active interaction, potentially going hours with only passive engagement.

Interpretations of sessions data

Apptopia’s figures are based on their recently developed ‘sessions data’ metrics.

In Apptopia’s analysis ‘it’s clear WhatsApp is the global messaging app of choice’. But, that is a rather big call to make on the basis of this data.

It is possible—although admittedly unlikely—that the logged hours could be the result of a meagre 39 million people using WhatsApp for every minute of every day for the entire duration of the study.

While some platforms like Facebook like to make the distinction between social and messenger very clear, others blur the lines. Do you think this distinction will hold up over time?

Copy Transmission is a Melbourne-based agency :: Better Brands. Loud & Clear.