Whereoscope, the app/subscription service that let you track your kids’ movements for safety purposes, is shutting down as of March 11th. The newsworthiness of this by itself notwithstanding, the shutdown asks a larger question about the App Store and individual investments in apps that provide a service.
The success of the iPhone and iPad have resulted not only in the overall market for Apps, but for a whole class of Apps that specifically exist to interface with Web or Cloud based services, and many of these services are either by subscription or have a premium subscription option. In many cases, they have been integrated into the workflow and personal lives of their users, and so the shutdown of Whereoscope begs the question – what would happen if an App that had become an important part of how you manage your time, information, or work suddenly ceased to exist, with little or no warning? Whereoscope apparently was planning on continuing the service as recently as a month ago, when the latest version of its iOS app was approved. In a mere two weeks, it will be no more.
One could argue that there are a few alternatives to Whereoscope – they themselves made mention to a few in their blog post announcing the shutdown – or that an app that tracks there whereabouts of your children is not “mission critical”, so to speak – or affected a large portion of the iOS user base. Fair enough. But what if Evernote or Dropbox were gone tomorrow? That could have a major impact in how people manage aspects of their digital lives. Even services like Reqall and Tripit – while not irreplaceable, and while not major repositories of data like some others – would certainly be missed. Even the suggestion that an App might not be available at some point could become reason in the minds of many not to invest too heavily in money or time. I know that I am not planning to make any purchases from the Kindle Store until I am assured that I will be able to read them in the native iPhone/iPad apps in the future.
However, the corollary to this is the fact that if we do NOT invest monetarily in these services – if we just enjoy the free services and never invest in the premium subscriptions – we may very well be the reason that these services cease to exist one day. Perhaps this has something to do with why Whereoscope is soon to be no more.
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