FARGO-An expert in the world of smartphone applications told a Fargo audience Wednesday that creating something unreliable is a cardinal sin when making apps.
"Nothing ruins a great experience like a crash," said Jesse Shapins, a technology entrepreneur whose current job involves leading the development of phone apps for BuzzFeed, an entertainment and news website.
During a keynote address at the Midwest Mobile Summit in downtown Fargo, Shapins said BuzzFeed is working to grow its mobile reach in a number of ways, including the production of more than 65 videos a week that live on social networks like Facebook.
For those working to build mobile audiences, Shapins' advice reads something like a mantra:
• Mobile is tactile.
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• Mobile is personal.
• Mobile is visual.
The latter, Shapins said, speaks to the way people communicate with each other today.
"Images are increasingly the language that we speak," said Shapins, who cited the success BuzzFeed has had with a recently introduced app that allows users to decide with the sweep of a finger on their phone screen whether animal photos are cute or not.
"There's something about that interaction that is so satisfying," Shapins said, referring to the hands-on relationship between people and their phones.
"It's almost like a prosthetic, an extension of who we are," he said.
Shapins asserted that while the latter part of the 20th century was focused on the notion that the medium was the message in communication, today's fast-paced world expands on that chestnut.
"Mobile is the medium," Shapins said.
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The Midwest Mobile Summit continues today with registration from 8 to 9 a.m. at ecce art + yoga, 216 Broadway.
A keynote address by Jake Joraanstad, CEO of Fargo-based Myriad Mobile, is scheduled at 9 a.m. at the Fargo Theatre, 314 Broadway.
