Those familiar with ChromeOSApps.org understand - we collect a serious amount of data directly from the Google Chrome Web Store. As of press time, this translates to tracking daily - 2,501 Apps which have 6,757,671 users.

Every now and again we’re going to elucidate in the form of a semi-serious award - The Best Top Good Apps Viral Award.

The award name can be explained simply and is the ‘semi’ part of semi-serious -

Best, Top and Good are high ranking keywords.
Apps - is an explanation necessary?
Viral is a neat word that may or may not be appropriate.

The serious part is how the award is earned. The Best Top Good Apps Viral Award is only earned through merit. Essentially we whittle down 2,501 Apps based on their user popularity performance. Specifically this is done through filtering the data. Each filter represents a hurdle designed to leave only the stout of the stout.

Hurdle One - Consecutive User Growth

Any App that doesn’t show day over day growth for the 14 days examined are immediately eliminated. In other words, the App user base did not decline. Decline occurs when users remove the App at a greater rate then users add the App.

In this case only 79 of 2,501 successfully negotiated Hurdle One.

Hurdle Two - Size Matters

The 79 survivors average 11,352 users. Size does matter. Hurdle Two is specifically designed to get to the top 25 Apps based on user size. This makes the minimum user base 6,500.

25 of 79 Apps have successfully complied with Hurdle Two.

The Final Hurdle - Spectacular User Growth

The remaining 25 Apps as a group grew their user base from 656,105 users to 809,208 users. This represent a growth of 123%. However this growth rate was not equal across Apps.

The table above displays the individual growth rates of the remaining 25 Apps. As you can see, four Apps clearly demonstrate Spectacular User Growth.

The Winners Are… Announcing The Four The Best Top Good Apps Viral Award Winners!

Congratulations to our winners. Note - the study period was 1/13/10 to 1/26/10. Your comments are welcome and will be accomodated in our next award article.