Stop the Application Separation?

If you were a Foursquare user, you probably know that the application that you once knew is now something completely different. Now, all the functionality that majority of the users used in Foursquare is now in a separate application called Swarm. Check-Ins and their related social components have been moved to Swarm while Foursquare is solely an place-finder application. The fun of Mayorships, achievements, and points have completely been removed from both application. With this spinoff, Foursquare may have lost many of their loyal users.

But Foursquare isn't the only recent company to separate functionality from their application. Facebook will be forcing their users to download their dedicated Messenger application in order to Facebook chat by removing the ability to message using the Facebook application within the next week. This is probably Facebook's method of creating a more comprehensive messaging application that users will naturally gravitate towards. This is an interesting move since Facebook owns WhatsApp which is a very similar application to Facebook's Messenger. Branding continues to grow in importance in the software industry.

Personally, I'm a loyal Google Hangouts user and won't be adding another messaging application to my phone; it's rare that I use Facebook chat on a frequent basis.

Google also split out its productivity suite. Instead of just Google Drive, it split it out to Google Drive, Docs, and Sheets. This makes sense as Google Drive has become an file explorer for it's cloud services while the other two applications serve document and spreadsheet purposes (that aren't obvious in Google Drive previously). Unlike the other to application splits, I think this move will be positive; it is a very logical move.

Then there are companies like Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Twitter spinning off applications in order to compete in a different market. Instagram spun off the new application, Bolt, to compete with SnapChat. A while ago, Twitter spun off it's own application, Vine, to compete against Instagram.