Abbreviated term for killer applications coined by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, authors of the business best seller Unleashing the Killer App...Digital Strategies for Market Dominance.
 
Downes and Mui define killer apps as the following:
 
“A killer application, or app, is an invention whose usefulness goes far beyond what its inventors intended, creating new industries, organizations and social structures and inadvertently destroying existing ones”
 
The telephone, TV, microprocessor and the Internet are all killer apps. The Internet is the most recent (and one of the most influential) killer apps. For example, Internet marketing and e-commerce are new industries spawned from the Internet, with new rules, new cultures and social structures. These industries are collapsing existing ones in many cases too. An obvious example is the travel industry.
 
Who needs a travel agent when you can go online and get yourself the best possible deal in just 5 or 10 minutes time? Many travel agencies have adapted to this new way of doing business (by reducing staff size, providing extra services, charging higher fees, etc.). Many have also gone out of business.
 
Think about it. The Internet and e-commerce really is changing the way people go about their lives, both the merchant and the consumer. From airline tickets, to banking Online, to buying and selling a variety of products and services, the Internet has within her a Mother lode of business related killer apps. These certainly are exciting times we live in!