Available as an arXiv preprint. Journal or proceedings publication has not been verified.
Extended longitudinal study.
The original study described the Shopify app market at one point in time. This extension follows applications across seven years to examine how competition changes, what happens around platform interventions and which applications remain detectable.
Longitudinal observations extend the original snapshot; they do not replace it with a current market census.
Platform interventions have different observed outcomes across categories. The event studies are descriptive, not controlled causal estimates.
Disappearance from tracking is an imperfect measure of exit, and detected installations do not measure paying customers or revenue.
From a snapshot to a longitudinal study
The paper combines the September 2025 snapshot with a weekly panel spanning February 2019 to March 2026 and listing characteristics reconstructed from Internet Archive captures. It revisits entry timing, then extends the analysis to platform governance and application survival.
Governance and survival
The study examines Shopify’s entry into chat and email capture, its exit from product reviews and its revenue-share change. It also evaluates survival patterns and early signals associated with later tracking exit. These are observations within one platform, not a promise about the future of a particular app.
What the data cannot establish
The tracked panel is selective and grows over time. Storefront detection can lapse, archived listings have uneven coverage, and governance comparisons cannot fully rule out other changes in the same period. The authors distinguish tracking exit from confirmed delisting and do not observe monetisation.
Cite this paper
Fabrizio Assabese and Peter-Jan Celis and Giuseppe Destefanis. (2026). Scale, Concentration, and Entry Timing in the Shopify App Ecosystem: A Longitudinal Study of Platform Governance and Application Survival. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.23771
FA
Judge.me
Fabrizio Assabese is Chief Growth Officer at Judge.me. His work connects data, growth strategy and commercial decision-making, drawing on experience across fintech and SaaS. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and an Executive MBA from SDA Bocconi, and co-authors research on the Shopify app ecosystem.
PC
Judge.me
Peter-Jan Celis is the founder and CEO of Judge.me, which he started in 2015. His background spans strategy consulting, software development and entrepreneurship. He holds a master’s degree in Applied Economics from KU Leuven, bringing technical and commercial experience to building products that help merchants earn trust.
GD
University College London
Giuseppe Destefanis is an Associate Professor in UCL’s Department of Computer Science. His research spans empirical software engineering, mining software repositories and large language models. He uses data mining, machine learning and natural language processing to study how people, technical systems and economic incentives interact across digital platforms.