Exploring engagement among mobile app developers – Insights from mining big data in user generated content

Purpose The Web 3.0 has been hugely enabled by smartphones and new generation mobile applications. With the growing adoption of smartphones, the use of mobile applications has grown exponentially and so has the development of mobile applications. This study is an attempt to understand the issues and challenges faced in the mobile applications domain using discussions made on Twitter based on mining of user generated content. Design/methodology/approach The study uses 89,908 unique tweets to understand the nature of the discussions. These tweets are analyzed using descriptive, content and network analysis. Further using transaction cost economics, the findings are reviewed to develop practice insights about the ecosystem. Findings Findings indicate that the discussions are mostly skewed toward a positive polarity and positive user experiences. The tweeters are predominantly application developers who are interacting more with marketers and less with individual users. Research limitations/implications Most of these applications are for individual use (B2C) and not for enterprise usage. There are very few individual users who contribute to these discussions. The predominant users are application reviewers or bloggers of review websites who use the recently developed applications and discuss their thoughts on the same. Practical implications The results may be useful in varied domains which are planning to expand their reach to a larger audience using mobile applications and for marketers who primarily focus on promotional content. Social implications The domain of mobile applications on social media is still restricted to promotions and digital marketing and may solely be used for the purpose of link building by application developers. As such, the discussions could provide inputs towards mobile phone manufacturers and ecosystem providers on what are the real issues these communities are facing while developing these applications. Originality/value The study uses mixed research methodology for mining experiences in the domain of mobile application developers using social media analytics and transaction cost economics. The discussion on the findings provides inputs for policy-making and possible intervention areas.