The broad adoption of contact-tracing apps would greatly help combat the spread of Covid-19. But a number of barriers — especially privacy concerns — have hindered progress in many countries that can’t or won’t mandate adoption. A solution is to start with small communities where they would be instantly useful (families, religious communities, workplaces, schools, bars and restaurants, beaches, hotels, trains, airplanes), get everyone to download and use it, and then scale from there. To achieve that, the app should be designed so it is instantly valuable to anyone in the targeted community who downloads it. Managing users’ expectations is also important.
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Most platforms fail because they never build a critical mass of engaged users. Well-known flops such as Google+, Apple’s music social network iTunes Ping, and Webvan are a tiny handful of examples.
