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These are the hottest emerging digital products and trends shaping our digital lives, according to data from Amplitude's Behavioral Graph.
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In the last year and a half, we’ve seen the unprecedented adoption of digital products. IDC estimates that by 2023, over 500 million new cloud-native products will be developed. Our own data shows that daily active use of digital products has grown 54% since January 2020.
With exceptional growth comes an exceptional opportunity for digital leaders—whether you’re a product manager, a growth marketer, an analyst, a CMO or a CPO. We believe your product launches, vision, strategy and roadmaps will have more impact and influence than ever on businesses over the next decade. At Amplitude, we want to provide meaningful insights into what digital products are growing, what is driving growth across industries and offer intelligence across our product-led community. This is our first Amplitude Labs report that leverages our own aggregated, anonymized data to:
Over time, we hope our Amplitude Labs reports will help you benchmark and optimize your own products.
As the pioneer of Digital Optimization, Amplitude’s heritage in data-driven product analytics gives us an unparalleled view into the trends shaping digital product adoption, in-product behavior and how digital products are driving strategies in a digital-first world. Our data spans more than 6,000 digital products across over 1,200 companies. Our Behavioral Graph—including 900 billion+ data points tracked every month—provides an expansive view into digital activity and behavioral analytics. Although our dataset does not span every device, user and product around the globe, we believe these insights are indicative of larger movements and moments in our ever-growing digital world.
In this report, we leverage Amplitude event data to showcase trends that are representative of the state of digital products across regions and industries. Data about global trends are based on anonymized, aggregated data sent to Amplitude for January 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021.
In this report, time-based analyses are limited to only include products that used Amplitude from the beginning of the analysis. Data about industry trends are based on daily active users: a measure of the total number of unique users active on a product or products each day over a period of time (such as day-by-day or as a monthly summary). Any commentary about percentage growth is based on analyses with a minimum threshold of users, products and data points for comparison, so as to ensure that outliers or small sample sets do not skew findings.
Specifically:
The digital industry as a whole has seen a steady rise in activity since the pandemic began. We observed that in April 2020, daily active users (DAUs) of digital products were up 18.9% compared to four months prior, according to data tracked by Amplitude. As of August 2021, that activity is up 54.1% overall.
While February 2020 and February 2021 appear as sharp declines, these lower rates of growth are simply due to the fact that in a monthly view, February has a smaller count of daily active users precisely because it has fewer days in a month.
Nothing fascinates the folks at Amplitude more than quickly growing products, which is why we set out to predict some of the next hottest products on the market. We analyzed aggregated monthly user data in our platform to identify companies that could become the next household names. Some of them have been around for a decade. Others were launched in the last two years. What unifies them all, though, is a deep appreciation for the digital experience and remarkable levels of customer adoption.
To define our list, we looked at products that showcased exponential growth in total number of monthly active users over a 13-month period, June 2020 to June 2021, according to data sent to Amplitude. We only considered products with a minimum of 1000 or more monthly active users as of June 2020 when we conducted our analysis. However, many products that made the final list had more than 100,000 monthly active users during that month. By June 2021, almost half of the products on this list showcased monthly active users in the range of 1 million or more.
We ordered the list by a metric of year-over-year growth in monthly active users, according to data sent to Amplitude. In this list, 10 companies are based in the United States, five are based in Asia, and another five are based in Europe and the Middle East. Out of these 20 companies, 16 have announced a recent funding round in 2021. This momentum reinforces what our data indicates: These are the next hottest products out there.
Keep an eye out for these up-and-comers—we’re sure you’ll see more of them in the year to come.
Our list of the next hottest U.S.-based products cover a broad range of use cases. Many of the top products—SmartRecruiters, CloudApp, Productiv and Stoplight—offer B2B solutions for enterprise companies. The exponential growth in usage of these products indicates just how important these solutions, which facilitate remote work at scale, are to businesses in 2020 and 2021.
Interestingly, two companies on this list—Toucan and Mote—have a language focus: learning a new one, or adapting voice to text. Both can be added to a web browser too, making it easier to attract new users.
There’s been plenty of talk about “The Great Resignation”—employees leaving jobs at a high degree this year. The popularity of SmartRecruiters, which has been around for 10+ years, seems to reinforce this movement. According to data sent to Amplitude, from June 2020 to June 2021, SmartRecruiters saw 10,897% growth in monthly active users. To fill more and more candidate roles, recruiters are turning to SmartRecruiters en masse. And to find a new job, many potential employees are using SmartRecruiters too. Consider this: with large customers like McDonald’s, every person who applies to a McDonald’s position is a SmartRecruiters user.
As digital product usage grows, so does the need for developer-friendly tools. Stoplight is a product that streamlines the process behind designing, building, and documenting an API. With an intuitive interface for such a critical business function, Stoplight has seen 4663% growth in monthly active users over a 12-month period. And in a time when up to 97% of product professionals work remotely, developer products like Stoplight have become all the more necessary.
With Toucan, learning a new language is easy. Toucan is a browser extension that will change a few words to a new language while a user browses the web. By seeing these second-language words contextualized, users are able to learn essential vocabulary while they multitask. In one year alone, the product has seen 3602% growth in monthly active users. Some of this organic growth could come from adding new languages—and thus new learners—to the platform, as well as due to the simple fact that in 2020 and 2021, screen time hit new highs, and Toucan is a perfect product to turn screen time into learning time.
Get financial rewards for working out? Seems like a slam dunk. Turns out, it is. Paceline—which offers users exclusive rewards from popular brands when users hit their fitness goals—is taking off among consumers. In one year, the product has seen 3222% growth in monthly active users.
Simplifying the banking experience has been a mission of many companies, but One seems to have truly cracked the code. The product—an all-in-one account that helps customers save, borrow, build credit and manage a budget—solves the problem that endless apps and accounts for sending and organizing money can create.
Mote has got text-to-speech figured out. It’s a browser extension and app geared towards the classroom: Teachers can use it to give thorough feedback on homework, and students can use it to help them with assignments. With the abrupt shift to remote learning in 2020, it’s no wonder Mote increased its monthly active users by 2103% in a year.
Every team has its go-to technology stack. But that means that at any organization, there are likely dozens of software subscriptions that were purchased but go unused. Productiv solves that problem. It’s the system of record for any company’s SaaS portfolio, and it boasts customers from fellow SaaS pioneers Zoom, Okta, Dropbox and Glassdoor. In one year, Productiv has seen 1699% growth in monthly active users, based on data seen in Amplitude.
Avail is a standout on this list; it’s not a startup, but a product supported by AllState. The ridesharing service—which facilitates reliable car-sharing between local owners and visiting (or local) borrowers—is only available in select cities for now. However, excitement for the service is spreading fast. With 1357% year-over-year growth, Avail is on its way to becoming a top choice for travelers.
Need to walk a prospect through a proposal? Or explain to a customer what they’re seeing on a screen? CloudApp has your back. The product makes communication—through screen recordings—seamless and clear in a time when many employees have worked remotely for more than a year. As such, it’s seen 835% monthly active user growth from June 2020 to June 2021, according to Amplitude data.
Ramp is the finance automation platform product that does everything: corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, accounting, and reporting. Its ease of use and streamlined platform is winning interest all over. In 2021, Ramp announced a $300 million funding round and grew monthly active users by over 600%, according to data sent to Amplitude.
In Europe and the Middle East, Wordtune, which taps into the language extension market like Mote and Toucan, is our prediction for the next hottest product, based on its exponential user growth as observed in Amplitude. We also see that fintech solutions are prominent on this list; Vivid, which specializes in investments, and Zopa, which focuses on loans, come in at spots #2 and #4, respectively.
Wordtune calls itself an “AI-powered writing companion.” It’s an extension that works across popular platforms—LinkedIn, Slack, Google Docs—and takes the user’s writing to A+ style with a simple click. Wordtune can rewrite a user’s language to make it more formal, more casual, shorter or longer. The power of this platform is winning Wordtune loyal followers: in a 13-month period, monthly active users (MAUs) grew 8088%, according to data sent to Amplitude. With screen time increasing around the globe—and more professionals communicating their ideas through writing—it’s no wonder that Wordtune has seen such explosive user growth.
In just two years, Vivid has taken off. The German fintech app is a go-to destination for commission-free investing on a seamless digital experience. The growth of the Vivid app aligns with the rapid rise of fintech over the last two years; with a strong base of early adopters, Vivid saw its monthly active users grow exponentially—2390%—in just one year.
Oda could be the future of grocery shopping in Europe. The Norway-based startup provides same-day grocery delivery and, according to TechCrunch, “aims to provide ‘a weekly shop’ for prices that compete against those of traditional supermarkets.” Oda is already profitable and expanding into new markets. We wouldn’t be surprised if it reached ubiquity across Europe in a few years.
Zopa may be the oldest company on this list, but that makes its user growth over the last year even more admirable. From mid-2020 to mid-2021, monthly active users of Zopa grew 764%. The fintech company—which provides a P2P money lending service that cuts out the middleman—already had a large base of customer love, earning recognition from CNET and Webby.
It takes a special company to build a product that cuts through the noise of photo editing software, and PhotoRoom is just that. The app, which makes it easy to take a photo of anything and then edit out and replace its background, saw 443% growth in monthly active users over the last year. With PhotoRoom, any business can create the photos that win them online purchases. And with ecommerce becoming just “commerce,” now, the app could become an essential part of any online merchant’s toolkit.
When it comes to our APAC predictions of the next hottest products, it’s all about crypto. Three of five companies on our list have emerged as huge players in the fintech industry, facilitating fast and secure exchanges for a customer base that’s eager to invest. Also making the list is Glints, a recruiting product, and the social media platform Koo.
Digital currencies are taking off around the globe, and CoinDCX stands to be a strong beneficiary of this movement. The product—trusted by more than 4 million users—makes it easy to invest in crypto safely and securely. CoinDCX announced its latest funding round this August, with investors valuing the company at $1.1 billion (Rs 8,150 crore).
Glints is a recruiting platform specializing in career development and recruitment for professionals in Southeast Asia. As more employees ponder a career change, Glints has become an essential partner in embarking on that journey, helping customers find placements across product management, finance, marketing, HR roles and more.
Koo is a social media platform with a unique differentiator for its primarily Indian user base: the ability to connect and share media in 13 local languages, such as Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, and Bengali. By focusing on its home audience, Koo is poised to become the social media platform of choice for a community that’s more than 1 billion strong.
The market is hot for bitcoin and blockchain, and Pintu appears to have cracked the code in Southeast Asia. In a 13-month period, the company’s product—a crypto assets platform for buying, selling, and investing in Bitcoin and Blockchain-based assets—achieved 1236% growth in monthly active users.
South Korea-based Dunamu is another winner of the fintech craze. The company owns and operates a digital asset exchange (UPbit), two investment exchange platforms (Stockplus and U-Stockplus) and an equity management platform (Onboard). Together, its products offer users a one-stop shop to buy, sell and invest with ease.
These are B2C products that soar with popularity among users of different states.
As much as the data of digital products tells a story about global trends, it also reveals regional-specific behavior.
Based on data in our platform, we’re able to determine the products that surge with popularity in particular locations. The list below shows the consumer products that people in each state use with more frequency compared to residents in other states. This data paints a story of cultural trends: the popularity of apps in certain states reflects the interests of its local population.
OnXMaps is a product that offers GPS for hunting and off-roading, and it’s incredibly popular among users in the West and Midwest. It also soars in popularity in Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota, practically becoming a part of the culture in places where hunting and outdoor recreation are the norm.
Top product* for:
AllTrails—a hiker’s best friend—is particularly popular in states where weekend activities are all about exploring the great outdoors. While it takes the top spot for relative popularity in these four states, we observed that it’s also quite popular across California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—showing that where there’s a hiking route, there’s an AllTrails download.
Top product* for:
There may seem to be an endless number of food delivery apps out there, but based on our data, Waitr takes the prize in the South. The app is only available in certain cities, but has recently expanded into the Midwest—by way of Missouri—as well.
Top product* for:
When it comes to that evening pizza order, consumers on the East Coast are opening Slice. It’s an app that supports local pizzerias, not the big chains—meaning that East Coast users can purchase their pizza with ease while supporting local businesses. It’s also incredibly popular in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Top product* for:
Hipcamp makes planning an outdoor adventure a breeze. The platform facilitates rentals for campsites, RV parks, glamping and more, and is particularly popular in regions where campsites book up to six months out. In addition to Vermont and Washington, we observed that it’s also quite popular among residents of California, Colorado, Montana and Oregon.
Top product* for:
It’s a seller’s market in North Carolina and Arizona, where home prices have appreciated throughout 2021. To meet this demand, we noticed homeowners and buyers alike are turning to Opendoor to list, browse and close on homes.
Top product* for:
We see cultural trends revealed in the regional popularity of other products across our platform, too. By using the same measure—consumer products that each state’s population uses with more frequency compared to residents in other states—we see that Surfline, the wave-tracking app, takes the top prize for surfing paradises California and Hawaii. In New Jersey, this accolade goes to Sotheby’s. For Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois, the app for Schnucks, a Midwest grocery chain, has the highest relative popularity. And Shipt, which is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is the most popular product relative to Minnesota, where its parent company Target is headquartered.
We also see that sportsYou, an app for the high school football community, is the product with the highest frequency of usage in Texas. Ohio is for lovers—and dog lovers—where Barkbox takes the top spot. With this same measure, apps that take the top spot for relative popularity include theScore for Delaware, PayByPhone for Florida, ST Math for Massachusetts, Providers for New Mexico, MoneyLion for Oklahoma, Current for South Carolina and Rec Room for West Virginia.
*When comparing consumer products that each state’s population uses with more frequency compared to residents in other states, according to data sent to Amplitude.
Before COVID gripped the world, digital activity showed a gradual upward trend, with larger shifts to digital expected to play out over years or decades.
In spring 2020, that all changed. Entire industries saw the floor for digital activity raised within a month, and those trends have sustained over time. Based on analysis of anonymized digital product usage data sent to Amplitude, we can even pinpoint the exact dates when the shift to ecommerce occurred: March 22 to April 17, 2020.
We’ve written about these shifts before. With this new analysis though, we see how what was then a three-month trend has solidified as the norm. We can also see the moments that signaled a shift in entire industries. Fintech accelerated in January 2021. Travel and hospitality plummeted in 2020, but began a resurgence this spring. And in digital media, daily activity soared at historic moments.
Crypto, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, #diamondhands—it seems that this year, fintech is everywhere. And our data shows that’s true. This chart may show what looks like a gradual increase in fintech activity from January 2020 to December 2020, but there’s nothing gradual about a 100% increase in just a year. What’s remarkable about the fintech industry is that the gains of 2020 pale in comparison to the leaps we observed in 2021. We’re not even at the end of 2021, and already the fintech industry is up 337% in daily active users compared to the baseline.
After nearly two years, digital activity for travel and hospitality products still hasn’t reached its pre-pandemic levels.
Compared to a baseline of January 2020 activity, we saw the sharpest declines in activity in April and May 2020: -54.7% and -56.7% usage, respectively, compared to just -8.24% in March 2020 and -3.7% in February 2020.
The rate of growth compared to the January 2020 baseline remained under -40% until March 2021, when—likely encouraged by vaccine availability and the easing of some restrictions—consumers began to return to travel and hospitality products. Daily active users in this industry climbed up, reaching -21.3% activity in May 2021 compared to the baseline of January 2020.
This rise, though, has plateaued. In the summer months, daily active users tapered off, hovering within a percentage point of -18% in June, July, and August 2021 as the spread of the Delta variant renewed concerns about traveling.
In April 2020, ecommerce activity rose 47.4% compared to January 2020. We saw this new “floor” sustained over the course of 2020 and 2021, hovering around 40-60% before the holiday shopping season and reaching highs of 75.1% and 75% usage growth in December 2020 and March 2021, respectively.
Similar to the product growth chart, the lower rates of change in February 2020 and 2021 are simply due to the fewer days by which to count digital activity compared to other months. In summer 2021, the rate of growth compared to the baseline appeared to have plateaued, landing at 55.9% in August 2021.
By taking a look at daily ecommerce activity as it played out in 2020, we can see deeper trends. Our data shows that even though stay-at-home restrictions for many consumers began in March 2020, April was when ecommerce activity really took off.
Growth in usage compared to the January 1, 2020 baseline:
While these usage rates were “off the charts” compared to the digital activity of January and February 2020, they were simply the first signs of a new, global standard for ecommerce activity. These rates of usage were maintained until the 2020 holiday season, when ecommerce activity hit new highs: 143% growth on Black Friday and 126% on Cyber Monday.
Following the holiday craze, ecommerce took a dip on Christmas Day: slowing to a rate of usage at 35.6% over the baseline; the lowest rate of activity since October. Clearly, consumers are taking a break from online shopping once December 25 rolls around. Post-holiday season, we saw ecommerce activity in 2021 return to similar levels showcased in summer and fall 2020, with a notable peak on May 28, 2021: the Friday of Memorial Day weekend deals.
We looked at 365 days of activity on digital media products—from September 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021—to get a sense of how user activity reacted to a year like no other.
In this data, it’s clear that media activity follows a general cadence most weeks: activity peaks from Monday to Thursday, and dips Friday to Sunday.
Specific dates stand out, though. The day with the highest digital media activity was Thursday, November 5: 54.9% over the September 1 baseline as the world tuned into U.S. election coverage. Activity peaked in the days after and before too, as results were debated, contested and delivered.
In January 2021, more peaks came: On the day of the Capitol Insurrection, daily active users of digital media rose 22.2% compared to the baseline. These peaks continued over the next two weeks, reaching a high of 24.3% growth in usage on Wednesday, January 20: the day of President Biden’s inauguration.
Data belongs to everyone. In the last two years, we’ve seen how the rapid shift to digital forced entire industries to rethink how they bring value to customers. Teams have huddled together (over webcams) brainstorming what they can do to win over customers and build engagement. In this process, data has become every team’s best friend.
Many publications have written about the democratization of data, and the ROI of removing barriers between teams and access to insights. In our own Amplitude dataset, we see this trend come to life.
In 2021, for the first time since Amplitude’s founding, the count of customer success roles using Amplitude surpassed the count of data scientists. And after product and engineering, the next most common Amplitude users come from marketing teams.
Product analytics is not just for product people. And impactful decisions, a culture of learning and tying outputs to outcomes doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It takes organizations investing in scaling data literacy—and the right solutions to make it easy to access and manage data and unify teams with common visibility. The result: better decisions, faster actions and transformed experiences.
In a time when the best product experience wins loyalty and retention, every team needs customer insights and digital analytics.
For Amplitude users that selected “other” as their team, the most popular role types named within this team category are: Product Manager, Software Engineer, Developer, CEO, QA and Product Designer.
In the last two years, the world has undergone a massive shift to digital. In this report, we get closer to understanding those impacts. Through Amplitude Labs data, we learned:
Consumers are spending more time online, businesses are demanding more from their product suite, and the companies that optimize the digital experience are breaking through the competition.
From these insights, it’s clear that the businesses best poised to win in a competitive market are the ones that adopt a product-led growth strategy. Understanding the trends in digital customer behavior is just half the battle. Putting digital optimization into practice is the next.
To learn more about product-led growth, visit the Amplitude blog or request a custom Amplitude demo today.