New App to Displace Craigslist, Professor Predicts

For the 31st consecutive year, The University of Alabama’s Office of Media Relations offers predictions from faculty experts for the coming year.

Application software, also known as an application or an “app,” seems ubiquitous these days.  The computer software is designed to help users perform specific tasks. You can play games, learn guitar, set up a workout program, shop and a jillion other things.

Dr. Craig E. Armstrong, assistant professor of management at The University of Alabama, says he expects someone to create, within the next year, an “app” that performs “Craigslist” functions for the exchange of goods and services.

Need to find someone to paint your house? Check the app. Want to earn some extra money by applying a skill you have? Check the app.

Armstrong says such apps will leverage and strengthen social ties among members of physical, rather than virtual, communities to match people with service or product needs with people who want to make a little extra cash.

The app platform will displace Craigslist because it will enable transactions with less traction and allow buyers and sellers to create reputations, Armstrong says.

“The social exchanges in the physical community will be recorded in, and enrich, the virtual community, creating a virtual cycle of local commerce,” Armstrong says.

And, just when you thought there already was an app for everything …