Welcome back to Gizmodo’s March Madness Challenge for the greatest apps of all time! Yesterday’s lineup was another tough one, but Duolingo beat out Skype with over 53% of the vote. Today, Powerful Flashlight replaces the only dating app in our lineup.
If you’re just tuning in, you can read all of our selection criteria for this historic match right here. Check out the full list of contestants embedded below. As always, if you think we’ve missed your personal favorite app, give us a shout in the comments. Now, let’s get into today’s contestants.
For many people, a flashlight app is not an app at all. Today, it is a built-in utility on most smartphones. But this is not always the case. In 2010, a full two years after the App Store launched, Apple finally allowed apps to use the camera flash on the iPhone 4 as a continuous flashlight. Many developers have jumped on the gold rush.
By 2013, there were over a thousand flashlight apps in the App Store, but the good times fell apart when Apple added native flashlight functionality. Whoever is still making money in this crowded field is going bankrupt, and many brick-and-mortar flashlight manufacturers may be feeling the pain.
A flashlight app does one thing, and what it does is useful. This is something countless apps cannot do.
Our second contestant is arguably the stand-in for all dating apps. People started meeting romantic partners online as early as the mid-1990s, but it was largely considered an awkward practice. As social networking and online life boomed in the ’00s, people became more and more accustomed to online dating, with sites like OkCupid encouraging users to conduct endless surveys while writing lengthy essays about themselves and their preferences. In 2012, Tinder’s trump card was a return to the superficial way people measure romantic partners in real life. By showing users photos and allowing them to swipe left or right to reject or like potential matches, Tinder brings dating into the mobile world and acknowledges that appearance is the primary motivation for setting up a first date.It’s rough and efficient, but Tinder is still enjoyable Healthy lead against its competitors.
So, reader, what would it be? Will a flashlight win your heart? Or will Tinder help you find the light of your life?
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