“You can’t make your app viral as an afterthought, like pixie dust that magically gives you a ton of users. It has to be designed into the app’s core functionality and features.”

Smashing Magazine is a great website about mobile app design. The quote above is from their article Key Ingredients to Make Your App Go Viral.  Here’s how I summarized it on LinkedIn:

Good apps, and the ones that I use regularly, follow these simple rules:

(1) Allow meaningful sharing, (2) Be transparent about privacy, (3) Make connecting essential to the user experience, (4) Reward your users and their connections, (5) Offer meaningful ways to engage users, and (6) Always be useful.

As I think more about what I like or don’t like about the mobile apps I use, and the reasons for that like/dislike, I find that a lot of the Smashing Magazine ideas make sense to me. I will post more on this in the future, since it raises so many interesting questions about why I gravitate to some apps more than others.