6 Apps that mattered most in 2017 December 25, 2017

If you own a smarphone, then you certainly may be using one or more apps on it.

Yet while you may have favourites among them, you probably don’t spend that much time determining which one of them has an impact on the world- good, bad or otherwise.

Listed below however are six apps that mattered most in the year 2017.

1. Coinbase: More than ever before, Cryptocurrencies—decentralized virtual currencies that depend on distributed computer networks using encrypted transactions, rather than banks, to move value from one person to another—soared in popularity this year.

2. Twitter: Though it’s nowhere near as big as Facebook (330 million monthly users, versus Facebook’s two billion), Twitter has played an enormous part in amplifying political messages this year, most notably those of President Donald Trump.

3. Amazon Key: Were it not for the October release, it would have been assumed to be an April Fool’s joke when Amazon introduced Amazon Key, its new high-tech service letting delivery folks come into your house to drop off your Amazon packages, with no actual key required.

Read also: Apple slapped with another class-action lawsuit for slowing down iPhones

1. Messenger Kids: Facebook unveiled Messenger Kids in December, making a bold play for the next generation of social-network users with a free app that lets those too young to use Facebook proper (the under-13 crowd) text and video-chat with parent-approved contacts.

2. Messages with Animoji: When Apple introduced the $999 iPhone X in September, the tech giant also trotted out its own take on facial-recognition technology, Face ID. Available just in its fanciest iPhone, Face ID uses sensors, cameras, and an itty-bitty dot projector to make a map of your face and checks it against one already stored on the handset.

3. Facebook: American’s still don’t know exactly how much of an influence Russian meddling had on the 2016 presidential election, but this year they learned that it did happen on several social networks, including the biggest one of all: Facebook.
   In October, Facebook told a Senate judiciary subcommittee that 126 million Americans saw Russian content—much higher than the figure the company had cited weeks earlier, when it said that 10 million people saw ads bought by Russian accounts.