Updates over Media, Marketing en Publishing
[door Anette Schouls] Het aantal apps in de stores explodeert. Hoe zorg je er voor dat een app in de download top 10 komt? Wat maakt een app nu zo gewaardeerd en populair?
En wanneer zijn consumenten zelfs bereid om voor een app te betalen?
Ervaring met het bouwen van mobiele apps speelt een grote rol bij het succesvol uitvoeren van een mobiele app-strategie. Denk daarbij aan het
[door Richard Otto] Vorige week heeft Google een nieuwe app met de naam ‘One Today’ gelanceerd. Met deze app kunnen consumenten $1,- doneren aan diverse goede doelen. Donateurs worden via de app geheel op de hoogte gehouden over wat deze charitatieve…
Lees meerDe app Boodschapp, die duizenden populaire voorverpakte voedingsproducten van de drie grootste supermarkten Albert Heijn, C1000 en Jumbo Supermarkten op prijs en samenstelling vergelijkt, is uitgebreid met een persoonlijk profiel, een favorietenlijst, duizenden extra producten en een verbeterde zoekfunctie.
Lees meer[door Richard Otto] Voor een Coca Cola campagne in Hong Kong heeft reclamebureau McCann Worldgroup een Second Screen game app ontwikkeld, waarbij de gebruiker de kans heeft om tijdens de Coca Cola-commercial de flesdoppen via hun mobiel kunnen opvangen en hiermee diverse prijzen kunnen winnen.
De “Interactive game commercial” werd op diverse kanalen uitgezonden en werd zelfs viraal door Youtube
Video sharing app Vine came under fire this past weekend for having a bit of a porn problem. That it has adult content on the network shouldn’t surprise anyone, and as long as it’s something you have to look for, I think criticizing them for it is as sensible as criticizing Google. But today (right now, as of this writing) the top featured pick on my home feed, and on the feed of many users judging by Twitter, is a porn video. Labelled “Editor’s Pick.”
Banjo, the location-based social network for sharing images and content tied to specific real-world locales, today unveiled its new native iPad and Android apps. This marks the first time Banjo has made the leap to tablets, and I spoke with Banjo CEO Damien Patton about why the time was right to bring Banjo to the bigger screen: It’s mostly about riding the second screen wave, Patton says, and tapping into the idea of a lean-back consumption model of material gathered via the smartphone app.
In October, Twitter acquired a company called Vine, which made a video-sharing app which not many people had the chance to use. AllThingsD reported that Jack Dorsey was pushing heavily to get the deal done, believing that video could be a huge part of Twitter’s future success and adoption. Dorsey also reportedly pushed Twitter heavily to acquire Instagram, which didn’t happen. Today, it seems like the company is preparing its video offering for the masses, as its own CEO has been playing around with it by sharing the links. Clearly, this is the type of video that the world wants to see: As you can see, in an expanded tweet, the video auto-plays and loops, which could get extremely annoying very fast. Hopefully Twitter will also release an API update to provide a proper “play button” to avoid this. As Financial Review points out, this would be an “Instagram for video” play, competing against all of the other apps on app stores everywhere that allow you to share and tweet out short-form videos or longer content on YouTube. The report suggests that you will be able to share six second videos on Twitter, and its unknown at this time as to whether it will be launched as a standalone app, as was intended before its acquisition, or if it will be integrated into Twitter’s current apps. Financial Review asked Twitter’s Editorial Director, Karen Wickre about the launch of a video service this week, and Wickre replied: …you’re talking about Vine … but no I don’t think [it’s being launched] quite yet. But I’m not on the product side so I don’t know all the details. When Vine was acquired, we discussed why this is both a good thing and a bad thing for Twitter and its users. Basically, by adding the ability to shoot and ship video to millions of people in real-time, there is a sense of privacy that will be lost by accidental postings, much like you see now with misdirected direct messages. Once this launches, how long will it take for the first news report about an accidental video including six seconds of something nobody on the planet should have ever seen with their eyes. You figure out the rest of that one. With powerful tools, comes powerful responsibility, and video is one of the media types that is going to require an all new set of
Branch launched out of closed beta only last week, but the engineering team is hard at work pushing out new feature updates. Today, the company announced that logged-in users will now see recommendations when they visit the homepage, from people you know. Your conversations will likewise be displayed to your contacts.
It happens to the best of entrepreneurs, that service, app or site that you set up finds an audience that totally blows your mind. You thought that a certain set of people would flock to your app like crazy, and you’re surprised by who actually uses it. If you have this “problem”, it’s important to recognize that it’s not a problem at all. One of the most interesting apps that is quietly picking up steam, heavy usage and a wide-ranging audience, Polar for iOS, has done some interesting things to best serve all of its users, and not freak out about it being “overrun by kids”, much like Instagram has been. If you’re not sold on Instagram being an app for the younger set, just take a look at the most popular pictures section, and you’ll get the gist quickly. Polar, which is a social voting app of sorts, acts much like hot-or-not does, slurping up the things that you are interested in based on your quick-fire voting. It’s a gorgeous app, easy to use and is kind of fun once you get into the groove of using it. Polar’s co-founder Luke Wroblewski, a self-professed data nerd, told me about how his company is making Polar a place to be for everyone, no matter what their interests are or what their age is. Needless to say, Polar saw its highest usage ever during the holidays, since a lot of people were getting their new iOS devices. It’s a good sign that there’s word of mouth going on for Polar, which is hard to get away from once your friends are tweeting and Facebooking polls. Wroblewski told me that New Year’s Eve had the highest number of polls created in one day, mostly centered on “best of 2012″ themes. The app has registered over 2M votes thus far. There goes the neighborhood? Teens like to use Polar, it’s obvious as you poke around. You’ll see questions like “Who is your favorite Twilight character?”, and I usually just skip over them. Wroblewski feels like that’s a bad user experience for older crowds, so the company is doing something about it. What Polar has done is created two versions of its popular and news feed sections, and there’s one with polls that don’t mention things like Justin Bieber, “who is cuter?” and things of that nature. By creating a simple corpus of keywords,
We told you about the super-simple and super-sticky voting app Polar for iOS a few weeks ago, and since then, the app has taken off quite nicely. When you use it, you’ll instantly see how people are exploring the platform to learn what people think about the things that they’re interested in. Sure, it’s a “polling” app, but calling it just that is selling it short. It’s quite addictive in a “Hot Or Not” way, to boot. The best part is that the app collects all types of fun data to start building out a friend and interest graph for you, that can match you up with like-minded people. Yes, there are already companies doing that, but not in such a speedy way. We spoke with its co-founder Luke Wroblewski about the 30% faster increase to 1M votes than the half-million milestone it had hit before. He told us that Polar has had an average of 60 votes per use per day in the past seven days. That’s engagement. On this impressive feat, Wroblewski told us: Interesting because I talked to an exec who used to run a popular desktop web contest/voting site and they were getting 20. So we’re 3x. I think it’s because of mobile and optimizing product for mobile. Since Wroblewski is a self-professed data addict, he tells us that of the people who downloaded the app, 84% of them voted on a poll. Basically, this means that the onboarding for Polar is a snap, and users are getting it right away. He says that this shows the power of a “mobile first” strategy, which some say might not be so valid. To further support this, Wroblewski shares that 99.3% of the votes are coming from its iOS app, even though its landing pages on the web are pretty awesome and lightweight. That means that people are jumping right to downloading the app, rather than voting from the web. Sure, Polar could be an edge case, but it’s fascinating, regardless: It illustrates what engagement on iOS is like. As many have pointed out- it’s huge. Again likely because people have their phones always with them, always on, and use them in little bits throughout the day. We designed Polar for this environment. It’s a breath of fresh air to speak to an entrepreneur that isn’t so secretive about the numbers within his app. In fact, Wroblewski has
Vacatures