We just crossed the 500,000 Android downloads from June of last year until March. It actually happened sometime during March so we’ll call it 9 months and some change.
500,000 is a lot of downloads on Android. It’s a great milestone for us.
Is Free Believable For App Development?
For the most part, we provide our apps for free to publishers. I had one potential customer ask me the other day if “…well, is it really free? I mean, not that you are lying, but is their some, I don’t know, catch?” I told him, “No. No catch. It’s really free.”
Today, I was talking to a business development person at a media company who was trying to get a feel for what we do. We got the same question three times. “They are free?” “Really, you don’t charge them?” “Seriously, they don’t pay you anything?” No, no, and no.
A few months ago we had the discussion internally about whether the free was too hard for people to accept. We thought that many people would think that it sounded too good to be true. And, therefore, must be a lie. Then they’d ignore our marketing material and move on.
In many cases, free is a great hook. It’s the price that everybody loves. But, for a business, they don’t seem to trust free. On top of that, they really don’t trust “not only is it free, but we’ll pay you”.
It’s quite the dilemma for us. For now, we continue to stick with free. But, we always wonder if we are managing to lose customers because of it.
Today, I was talking to a business development person at a media company who was trying to get a feel for what we do. We got the same question three times. “They are free?” “Really, you don’t charge them?” “Seriously, they don’t pay you anything?” No, no, and no.
A few months ago we had the discussion internally about whether the free was too hard for people to accept. We thought that many people would think that it sounded too good to be true. And, therefore, must be a lie. Then they’d ignore our marketing material and move on.
In many cases, free is a great hook. It’s the price that everybody loves. But, for a business, they don’t seem to trust free. On top of that, they really don’t trust “not only is it free, but we’ll pay you”.
SxSW Recap
Well, the last three days of SxSW just about killed us and we are still recovering. Still, it was well worth it and a great conference.
While we thought the first day of sessions was a toss-up for quality, the rest of the conference provided hit after hit. The Moguls of Food Porn, Blogs with Balls, and Everyday Improv were fantastic and those are just the ones right off the top of my head without thinking about it. In the last three days, I don’t think I left one session early.
Big props to Fansided.com for hosting the get together at the Lavaca Street Bar after the Blog With Balls Pepsi Lot roundtable (I will say that I was surprised at the number of obvious homeless people who crashed the Pepsi Lot for free alcohol). Nothing like wings and beer to end the evening.
After we completely recover, we’ll start looking at the next event. Right now, I’m thinking Blog World in New York is a contender.
While we thought the first day of sessions was a toss-up for quality, the rest of the conference provided hit after hit. The Moguls of Food Porn, Blogs with Balls, and Everyday Improv were fantastic and those are just the ones right off the top of my head without thinking about it. In the last three days, I don’t think I left one session early.
Big props to Fansided.com for hosting the get together at the Lavaca Street Bar after the Blog With Balls Pepsi Lot roundtable (I will say that I was surprised at the number of obvious homeless people who crashed the Pepsi Lot for free alcohol). Nothing like wings and beer to end the evening.
After we completely recover, we’ll start looking at the next event. Right now, I’m thinking Blog World in New York is a contender.
SxSW Day Two: Part One
We started the day with a company meeting over breakfast tacos at Maria’s Taco Express. I highly recommend it for the tacos and as a venue for brainstorming.
The conference part is going a little slower today. The parking situation isn’t quite as good as yesterday and we had a nice long hike into the ACC. We are now biding our time in the Blogger’s Lounge waiting for the big keynote from Seth Priebatsch at 2:00. I’m looking forward to the 3:30 session on “Building Native Apps Across Platforms”. I want to know how their experiences and suggestions mesh with ours.
SxSW Day One
We’re slogging through our first day at SxSW. Slogging? With 18,000 people, it is some slogging.
The sessions are hit and miss so far. Combined we have been to eight total sessions in two times slots. We have walked out of four of them, but found four of them to be really good.
Highlights: Using Improv to improve company teamwork. For introverts like us, I can see that we won’t like it but that it seems like it would be great for us. Using interns in your company, a no-go for us. Using your personal blogging to become a marketer. Very good stuff. I’d highly recommend watching these three sessions online when they are available on the SxSW site.
Meet Us At SxSW
All three of us from Notice Software will be attending SXSW next weekend, drop us a line and let’s connect if you’re also at the show!
Native App Development: Keeping Up Is Tough
These days it seems like everybody has a smartphone and it seems like everybody is spending more and more time on it. The wildly expanding smartphone market has meant two big challenges for us that are at odds with one another. One, native apps are critical to creating a quality user experience. Two, native app support gets increasingly difficult.
More smartphones in the market means more apps, which in turn, means the better our apps have to be. The more smartphones in the market, in turn, means more devices with more screen sizes to support. If you thought browser support was tough for web app development…
While the device proliferation is challenging in many ways — development environments, app market challenges, devices to test on, etc. — we have remained committed to a native app experience. We feel there is no substitute.
The challenge, though, is how does a small company keep up? Well, we are doing it and we think it is a pretty interesting case. Both tech-wise and business-wise.
More smartphones in the market means more apps, which in turn, means the better our apps have to be. The more smartphones in the market, in turn, means more devices with more screen sizes to support. If you thought browser support was tough for web app development…
While the device proliferation is challenging in many ways — development environments, app market challenges, devices to test on, etc. — we have remained committed to a native app experience. We feel there is no substitute.
The challenge, though, is how does a small company keep up? Well, we are doing it and we think it is a pretty interesting case. Both tech-wise and business-wise.
Support For iOS In-app Subscriptions
Apple announced support for their new in-app subscription on Tuesday. While we aren’t sure how the financial model will work for publishers, 30% seems like a lot, we’re a technology company and not exactly big enough to make them change their mind. So, we’re going to roll with it.
As soon as Apple opens up their subscription server, our mobile news client will support in-app subscription. If you have a magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or other subscription-based content and are looking for an inexpensive way to get onto the iPad or iPhone; drop us a line.
As soon as Apple opens up their subscription server, our mobile news client will support in-app subscription. If you have a magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or other subscription-based content and are looking for an inexpensive way to get onto the iPad or iPhone; drop us a line.
We Moved to Google App Engine – And It Was Better Than Good
Our corporate ‘uptime’ in the Google App Engine began about a year ago and it has been great. The benefits are extensive – more customers, happy customers, great response time, great uptime, etc. The benefits of GAE technology are definitely visible to our end users, but they are even more significant internally.
The move allowed us to stay focused on the things that matter, improving our platform and keeping our partners happy, instead of spending time replacing the latest failed hard-drive or debugging the latest performance bottle neck. 100% of our time goes to development. 0% to maintenance.
Our development focus and/or efficiency is only part of the gain. The other part is that we can provide more revenue to our partners.
Why? Because our operational costs are so low. Not only did GAE boost our operational speeds, but it did so at a very effective price point. We didn’t have to invest huge amounts of capital into a server farm based on projected traffic. We only spent money on the bandwidth we needed. Money that most companies spend on infrastructure we spend on development.
Not only has the increased efficiency lowered our intial costs and focused our efforts, it has also resulted in an overall enhancement in the quality of our services. The Google App Engine’s comprehensive infrastructure makes it easier to write scalable apps. By taking full advantage of Google App Engine’s outstanding perks our Mobile Apps developing services are able to scale instantly and infinitely. And they do so inline with our revenue.
The move allowed us to stay focused on the things that matter, improving our platform and keeping our partners happy, instead of spending time replacing the latest failed hard-drive or debugging the latest performance bottle neck. 100% of our time goes to development. 0% to maintenance.
Our development focus and/or efficiency is only part of the gain. The other part is that we can provide more revenue to our partners.
Why? Because our operational costs are so low. Not only did GAE boost our operational speeds, but it did so at a very effective price point. We didn’t have to invest huge amounts of capital into a server farm based on projected traffic. We only spent money on the bandwidth we needed. Money that most companies spend on infrastructure we spend on development.
Not only has the increased efficiency lowered our intial costs and focused our efforts, it has also resulted in an overall enhancement in the quality of our services. The Google App Engine’s comprehensive infrastructure makes it easier to write scalable apps. By taking full advantage of Google App Engine’s outstanding perks our Mobile Apps developing services are able to scale instantly and infinitely. And they do so inline with our revenue.
Fewer Is Better
I came across this article on The Register the other day. The gist is that a developer is claiming Apple has put a ban on single radio station apps. I’d be surprised if this was really the case.
The key to Apple’s policy is fewer is better.
I think Barcus makes some very valid points. Radio stations are competitors. They don’t want their content bundled with the content of other radio stations. Radio stations are also brands. They want to have their brand — call letters — on the desktop of the phone. They want people to go to the App Store and be able to search for those call letters to find their app. Neither of these things is possible in a branded app. But, Apple doesn’t care. For them, fewer is better.
I feel the frustration of Barcus. A good business strategy appeals to the business sense of a media company. They want to build their brands. But, asking Apple to understand the media industry and have a plan for it in their App Store is asking too much. They would have to have a dedicated team for just the media industry. And it is an industry that is a mess right now. So, they fall back on their policy of fewer is better.
If all these apps had been submitted on different developer accounts. If the stations in question had all created their own accounts and submitted an app, I’d bet every one of them would have been accepted. For Apple, creating barriers to entry, even if they are as minimal as $100 and the time to create an account, they are moving toward fewer is better.
If you are a company submitting a lot of apps to the app store, you better have a ton of content in the apps — like the Bloguin network app with 150 or so blogs or Baseball Bloggers Alliance with 75+ sites — or you better be a custom development shop. For some media properties, like say our blog business, bundling apps is a pretty reasonable demand. For others, like radio stations or newspapers, it doesn’t seem like something they’d want to do. Your priority as a dev company has to be inline with Apple’s. Fewer. Better.
The key to Apple’s policy is fewer is better.
I think Barcus makes some very valid points. Radio stations are competitors. They don’t want their content bundled with the content of other radio stations. Radio stations are also brands. They want to have their brand — call letters — on the desktop of the phone. They want people to go to the App Store and be able to search for those call letters to find their app. Neither of these things is possible in a branded app. But, Apple doesn’t care. For them, fewer is better.
I feel the frustration of Barcus. A good business strategy appeals to the business sense of a media company. They want to build their brands. But, asking Apple to understand the media industry and have a plan for it in their App Store is asking too much. They would have to have a dedicated team for just the media industry. And it is an industry that is a mess right now. So, they fall back on their policy of fewer is better.
If all these apps had been submitted on different developer accounts. If the stations in question had all created their own accounts and submitted an app, I’d bet every one of them would have been accepted. For Apple, creating barriers to entry, even if they are as minimal as $100 and the time to create an account, they are moving toward fewer is better.
If you are a company submitting a lot of apps to the app store, you better have a ton of content in the apps — like the Bloguin network app with 150 or so blogs or Baseball Bloggers Alliance with 75+ sites — or you better be a custom development shop. For some media properties, like say our blog business, bundling apps is a pretty reasonable demand. For others, like radio stations or newspapers, it doesn’t seem like something they’d want to do. Your priority as a dev company has to be inline with Apple’s. Fewer. Better.
