Five life-changing apps that didn’t exist ten years ago

In 2010 technology was blooming. Looking back at those days – the devices, the websites – it may feel like looking at some black-and-white pictures of our ancestors. Facebook was still cool and Twitter was the new kid on the block. Smartphones were gaining populairty but they were quite basic still. If you think of recent tech advancements in terms of iPhones, it was the year of iPhone 4. It was – and still is – just the beginning of a new year. We look at five apps that didn’t exist back then, which have since changed our lives and the way we communicate with people.

Instagram

It was late October 2010 when Silicon Valley techies Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom began to develop an app that would come to revolutionise not just photo sharing, but the whole way people – young people especially – interact online. Increasing from one million to 100 million users between 2010 and 2013, Instagram is the picture-perfect model of app success. Facebook saw its potential and was quick to snap it up in 2012.

WhatsApp

Technically born in 2009, the app officially opened to the mass market in August 2010 when it released the first version for Android. Once again, it was Facebook who spotted its huge potential, although this time it took longer to act on it – which ended up in a big $19bn bill. Although it might seem a corner of the app world reserved for your extended family group chat, WhatsApp has been the world’s most popular messaging app since 2015, with over two billion users worldwide.

TikTok

TikTok is the first video sharing-based major app. Still relatively young compared to the other big hitters, having been launched only in 2017, TikTok has attracted a huge following among Generation Z – and a great deal of bemusement from anyone born before 2000. The short-form video format favoured by users lends itself to surreal humour and the spread of viral memes, and has even launched successful showbiz careers for some, including the rapper Lil Nas X, who used the app to publicise his single Old Town Road – which subsequently had a record-breaking run at the top of the Billboard 100.

Uber

It was 2011 when, in San Francisco, Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick’s app to hire private cars was launched. Now, every major city in the world seems inconceivable without it. The ride-sharing app started with a simple premise: how to make hiring a ride affordable. Its business model, incorporating dynamic pricing and drivers as independent contractors, has allowed their pricing to floor competition, but has come under fire from some quarters. At the turn of the third decade of the 21^st century, it seems as though pricing might not be the ultimate priority for all consumers.

Spotify

While Spotify had an early circulation in Europe, it opened to the US market and global consumption in July 2011. It was a groundbreaking moment: people didn’t have to be pay for albums and tracks individually anymore, but could stream them for a monthly subscription fee (around £10). At from a time when a single album could cost up to £8 on iTunes, Spotify was groundbreaking. Apple launched a rival service, Apple Music, in 2015 – but how many people do you know who use it? Of all the apps on this list, Spotify has perhaps the most widely-agreed upon popularity, and its user-friendly interface and degree of social reach is admirable. It’s impossible to imagine a world without it now.

Apps and more generally software have and still are changing our world, creating new opportunities to communicate, enjoy your time and find jobs that fit well with our skills: see the full list of igaming software specialists and find here industry leading software and a site that caters to everything you need.

The editorial unit