For the past two years, Gilad Lotan (Chief Data Scientist at Betaworks) has been collecting data from Apple’s App Store RSS feeds. Last week Lotan published nine interesting findings in a post on Medium – complete with over a dozen fascinating charts.

Here we can clearly see both weekly cycles in app usage, but also longer term trends throughout the year. Facebook Messenger, which relaunches as ‘Messenger’ in June, stays very close to the top position throughout the whole year, while both Viber and Tango start strong and slowly drifts down the chart. Find My Friends, on the other hand, displays high volatility — drastic changes in ranking, hence app engagement — especially throughout the summer months, and Twitter has clearly weekly cycles.

The best part of Lotan’s story is definitely the accompanying charts, which really help tell the story alongside his commentary. But here’s one more snippet to encourage you to read his whole article:

Here we look at new applications that not only reach a notable spot in the top chart, but also sustain it to some degree. As you can see below, a handful of these apps are music related: SongFlip (free music streaming), Musicloud (stream music from your Dropbox mp3’s), and Free Music HQ (what it sounds). Moments is the Facebook app that helps you find yourself in friends’ photos, and Triller helps users make music videos on their phones. There are also two applications that help upload content into Snapchat. See a trend here? Media, media, and more rich media!