An “app,” in the eyes of your average consumer, is something you literally download onto your phone or computer. It’s a piece of software in your possession. Implied in this mental model is a sort of containment. An app is like a caged tarantula we can take out now and again. But when we put it away, it stays put away, because no one wants to wake up in the middle of the night with a giant arachnid on their face.
When Facebook began allowing apps to connect with its service to expand what users could do on the social network in 2007, this model was destroyed overnight. You were no longer downloading a piece of software that you somehow owned or that you somehow could unplug. You were connecting to a service that lived on servers, an omnipresent entity that was always there and always watching, even after you long stopped tending those Farmville crops or responding to those Words with Friends requests.
Source: Facebook Has An App Problem
