Last night I went to my second Silicon Valley iPhone Developers meetup. Tim Burks is the organizer (13 so far!) and both times I’ve been impressed by the speakers and what I’ve learned. I’ll go again. If you want to get in next month you better say “Yes” now.
I Tweeted about a couple of the apps that were shown last night. I’m just going to point to a few of them. All of these have the same basic problem. Not enough thought is going into the marketing before they are created and launched. There’s also few opportunities for the developer to currently recoup some of their development cost because they are missing out on sponsorship like opportunities.
Thirsty Pocket: This is a mobile focused Ad network that is being launched from the iPhone. It begins to show what an ad application could do and work like on the iPhone. They’ve adopted some weird navigation that isn’t the iPhone norm. On the plus side they demonstrate that you can just take a picture, write a description and your ad is done. It’s much simpler than craigslist to create an add. The challenge here is to get enough users to create a marketplace. Example their marketing initiatives could start with the large sellers of Apple iPhone gear. Trade your “apple” stuff. Separately, there was another interesting “craigslist” app. It will join many others in the app store. I’d personally love to do a “new” craigslist app with Craig and co involved. It could bring new features and provide an interesting platform for going forward. The future of classified is mobile.
Clydomania Lite: At first I had problems getting it from the app store although that seems to now be resolved. It was an impressive demo of the Graphic engine effectively. Works a little like a kaleidoscope. The guys a wizard and clearly can build things in days or hours where it takes others weeks n weeks. This app is priced at $.99 cents. My daughter tells me its not worth that. I found it interesting eye candy. It would be interesting to see what other people shoot and what patterns it generates. Rather than put in a server maybe you could sent 12 second type videos with the picture at the end and voice over to 12secondTV or You Tube. I asked it it works with iTunes. Lots of options for developing something like this. The developer Bob Free indicated that it was more of a demo than a serious proposition. It will be interesting to see how this bare bones version does. My guess is it should be free with a premium version. Much more likely to get to a volume sales number and it has the potential for it.
HearPlanet: Is working to bring the talking tour guide to your iphone. They provided the first showing of their new map integration which will have many developers lusting for the same solution. Zooming the map with two fingers is a difficult problem if you don’t have access to the iPhone Maps application. It should launch in the update in the next few days. Hear Planet is still free. This is a group self funded venture that appears to know where they are going and how they will make money.
The last presentation was about Flurry. Flurry provides analytics for your iPhone app. They previewed a new “flow” version. You only need to see the demo to know that your every keystroke is being captured on that new beta app you are trying out. It’s not the only solution out there although they claim to now have a growing number of develpers using it. As it was pointed out to me. No reason a developer shouldn’t put more than one analytics tool into there app. Flurry is free. As a company I see many marketing and research opportunities ahead for them.
Of the apps none have significant downloads yet. <50000. Almost all the developers were turning their attention to marketing. For me it seems late in the game. Apps are often named poorly. The opportunity for visibility isn’t planned in advance. Once launched the app will need a stream of quick updates to remain relevant and use the updates to stay up in the list. It’s too late then for starting to think about positioning or promotions. One app only took three days to clear the app store. Others I know have taken weeks.
It’s a fertile ground out there. Most developers were working on their own stuff. Few are going to make it rich overnight. The sheer number of apps being launched means new marketing strategies are required upfront. It’s almost time to pronounce the developer model for the balance after Apple’s share obsolete. The smart developer is going to start spending some of that percent upfront to get results.
