GigaOM » Appsfire

Appsfire takes on App Store with combined discovery and deals app

Ryan Kim — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:00:47 +0000

Appsfire was already one of the top tools for discovering apps and finding app deals. But now, Appsfire is combining its Appsfire and Appsfire Deals into one app that it hopes will be an even better destination for app lovers.

Appsfire 4.0, which is debuting Monday on iOS, has been rebuilt to speed up the app finding experience and make its recommendations more relevant. It should give iOS users a solid alternative to the newly upgraded Apple App Store. As my colleague Erica Ogg pointed out, the App Store, remodeled after Apple’s acquisition of app search tool Chomp, still needs improvements in several areas including search relevancy.

Appsfire 4.0 allows people to get fast search results for an app name, developer, category or a need. I tried it out and found it seems a step smarter than the App Store in figuring out what I’m actually looking for. The App Store has gotten better at what a user is trying to search for but still looks more at downloads so it can struggle with all the different kinds of searches that people undertake.

The Appsfire recommendation engine is also more attuned to an individual user thanks to updated preference settings. Now, users can set their price sensitivity, their interest in games, and how much deals matter to them. That’s in addition to more general profiles like geek, parent, gamer or traveler that they can set for themselves.

Appsfire’s recommendations work with Appsfire’s App Scores, which it developed as an alternative to Apple’s App Store rankings. Unlike the App Store rankings, which are largely tied to downloads, Appsfire uses app ratings, developer reputation, and web mentions and reviews to come up with its own score. Now, Appsfire bases its recommendation on what it thinks is best for a user, not just which apps are on sale, which is what it did in the Appsfire Deals app.

The Appsfire experience is more social as well. Inside the app pages, Appsfire pulls in prominent Twitter and Facebook comments in a feature called Chatter. Users can create their own curated lists of apps, which can be shared and will eventually feed back into the recommendation engine. Appsfire users can also connect via Facebook to see what their friends have saved and downloaded.

Ouriel Ohayon, founder of Appsfire, told me the decision to collapse Appsfire’s two apps into one was largely practical because it’s hard to manage and market two apps. But it also means that users can get everything they need from one app, which can now address not just sales shoppers but users just looking for the best app for them.

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iOS App Store rule change could be targeting pay-per-install apps

Erica Ogg — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:16:23 +0000

Apple has updated its App Store rules to include language that seems to imply that apps that promote or sell other apps will be disqualified from being on the App Store. That brings to mind apps that recommend other apps: Apps like Chomp, which Apple purchased in February. But the change is not likely to affect apps that have a unique take on app recommendation.

The new language in the App Store rules states: “Apps that display apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.” Techcrunch noted the concerns of developers on Monday.

Because the App Store has for so long promoted the most popular apps rather than the best apps, a cottage industry has emerged that attempts to solve this problem (subscription required). On its face, “apps that display apps other than your own for purchase or promotion” would disqualify popular iOS recommendation apps like Appoday, Appsfire and others that recommend quality apps to iOS users through editorial or social criteria. It’s just another way to get promoted or find an audience on the App Store, which is now 700,000 apps strong.

I talked to Appsfire’s co-founder, Ouriel Ohayon, who says that his app, which offers social recommendations for iOS apps, has not been affected by the rule changes. That’s because his app has seen two different updates submitted and approved by Apple since the changes were implemented. That’s a good indication he’s in the clear — at least for now.

If the rules were intended to include Appsfire and its ilk, what would that mean for Facebook? Apple and Facebook only recently have gotten back on good terms after their falling out in the run-up to the launch of Apple’s Ping social music network (that has since been shut down). Is Apple about to excise one of the most popular apps of all time from the App Store because of Facebook’s new app promotion service? “I have a hard time thinking Apple would reject Facebook now that they sport the App Center,” Ohayon told me.

I do too.

He thinks what’s more likely is that Apple is trying to weed out app recommendation “clones” that look too much like the App Store. That’s the “promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store” part of the new rule’s language. AppGratis’ CEO Simon Dawlat told PocketGamer.biz essentially the same thing.

Cloned apps that are ripoffs of other successful apps or apps that exist simply to promote others are not a new problem on the App Store. Apple has taken steps in the past to root these out, sometimes removing apps at another developer’s request. A month ago, Apple went even further and introduced a tool that allowed any developer to easily report cloned or copyright-infringing apps.

Apple began cracking down a year ago on apps participating in incentivized pay-per-install programs — app makers could pay other apps to promote its apps as a marketing tactic. Those kinds of apps are now rejected from the App Store. The rule change appears to be an extension of that same effort.

Apple did not comment on the change. But it sounds like if your app-recommending app doesn’t go too far in imitating Apple’s own iOS App Store, you’re probably safe.

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Xyologic takes funding as latest to improve mobile app discovery

David Meyer — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:08:13 +0000

Analytics startup Adeven suggested earlier this week that two-thirds of App Store was pretty much invisible to most users, leaving the apps unranked and hardly downloaded.

The company said, somewhat controversially, that Apple’s app search was lacking, leaving users largely dependent on Top 25 lists that tend to reflect the size of the developer’s marketing budget more than they do relevance to the users’ needs.

It’s not the first time someone has highlighted a problem here. Indeed, there are a few companies trying to target a perceived need for app discovery. Appsfire and Quixey spring to mind, as – of course – does Chomp, which Apple bought earlier this year.

But another service that has been gearing up for around two years is Berlin-based Xyologic, whose Xyo service went into closed beta on Thursday (you can request an invite here).

Xyologic’s big selling point is the way its technology classifies apps into relatively specific genres – a strategy that it says makes it possible to understand even vaguely-expressed search queries. In a recent blog post, the firm said its work so far has shown:

only five percent of app search queries are for specific usage functions.
a similar amount are for specific app names.
the vast majority are category searches.

So, using its proprietary ‘natural app category’ tech, the company has defined more than 700 app genres and more than 100 game genres. It also claims to “put some of the best and often undiscovered apps on top of the search result rankings”, and says it can make it easier for users to evaluate the quality of an app.

Right now, the Xyo beta covers Android, although iOS is coming soon. Xyologic also announced a funding round (amount undisclosed), from investors including Signia Venture Partners, Gameforge founder Klaas Kersting and Soundcloud co-founder Eric Wahlforss. Xyologic CEO Matthäus Krzykowski told me:

“This is the first app search that aims at the mainstream user. Our approach is unique in this sense that, in the last two years, we have gathered information on how users search for apps, what queries they type, how they behave.”

So how bad is the app discovery problem, really? According to Krzykowski, 0.1 percent of apps get 50 percent of the downloads.

“The situation is pretty similar on all platforms, albeit slightly better on iOS,” he added.

Sure, Krzykowski has a vested interest in pointing this out. But, at the same time, this kind of information is what’s kept the company afloat during its initial, pre-launch two years of operations. Until this new investment round, Xyologic has bootstrapped and supported itself by selling data and reports.

“We also tested older versions of our app search in partnerships with third parties where we split up the advertising revenue. We used this money to fund our innovation in app search,” Krzykowski noted, adding that, in terms of future revenues, “you will see innovative approaches to app marketing”.

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Appsfire buys Appstatics, a mobile tool for tracking an app’s popularity

Erica Ogg — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:00:37 +0000

As part of its strategy to provide information on the best mobile apps available, Appsfire is buying itself an app. On Tuesday the company is announcing that it has purchased and is relaunching iOS app Appstatics from Mos Internet Technologies. Appsfire did not disclose what it paid for the app, but it had plenty to say about its plans it.

Appstatics is an app you can download to follow the sales progress of any iOS app once it hits Apple’s App Store. After searching for an app, you can see how it ranks on a global basis, and in any individual country’s app store, either free or paid. The app also provides data showing which apps are having a particularly hot week or month. This tool will be most useful to developers who want to see how buyers are responding to their app, but can also be an aid to advertisers, investors or anyone trying to understand mobile app buying trends.

The company explained the decision in a blog post:

We tried a variety of solutions like Appannie (a great service by the way) which works well on the computer, but was very impossible to use on the mobile. A few apps existed in the App store too, but we couldn’t find any that were making us happy on a daily basis both in user experience and quality of data.

We were even thinking about building one from scratch. When we discovered that a couple of guys created Appstatics, a wonderful app to do exactly that and we believe it would be a great foundation for what we wanted to do.

Appsfire has been on a mission to help consumers and developers understand the trends surrounding Apple’s gargantuan mobile app store, which now counts over 650,000 apps. Last week it unveiled a new analytics service that ranks the most popular apps based on an app’s App Store star ratings from users, social media buzz as well as the developer’s overall reputation – not simply the most downloads, which is the way Apple itself ranks the top apps. The acquisition of Appstatics is just another stream of data it can offer users who want insight into an app’s performance. Surfacing quality apps for buyers is one of the App Store’s biggest challenges, and several companies have popped up to try to solve the problem, both for buyers and developers.

Appstatics normally sells for $1.99, but to raise awareness Appsfire is going to offer it for free for one week.

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Appsfire ranks the best iOS apps, not just the most-downloaded

Erica Ogg — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:16:07 +0000

Operating on the theory that there are better ways to find great iOS apps than skimming the “top downloaded” lists on Apple’s App Store, Appsfire has published its first-ever alternative rankings that it says highlights the best quality apps, not just the ones with the highest download count.

Appsfire is a social recommendation service for apps that introduced its App Scores system in May. The system uses an app’s star ratings from users, social media buzz as well as the developer’s overall reputation. The scoring system, which has been in the works for more than two years, is what informs the monthly reports that will begin with Friday’s first publication. After Apple jumpstarted the mobile app industry in 2008, finding good apps has become increasingly more difficult as the number of apps available has skyrocketed.

The motivation of publishing this data is to help people get a sense of what apps others are using at specific periods of time, which is normally difficult, Ouriel Ohayon, co-founder of Appsfire, said in a phone conversation Friday.

“The only moment of the year you really know what’s happening with [App Store] rankings is when Apple posts the most downloaded apps of the year. And they are only based on download activity. If the app is highly downloaded, it sometimes means the app is good,” he said.

But sometimes it doesn’t. A current example: Pyramid Run is right now No. 1 on the App Store for free iPhone apps. But the user feedback is terrible: out of 3,387 user ratings there are 2,406 one-star ratings. The same phenomenon can be seen in the long-term most-downloaded apps in the App Store. Facebook’s mobile app, for example, dominates the all-time most-downloaded charts because it’s an indispensable utility for many folks. But, as many of us know, the user experience is objectively awful, and the reviews in the App Store reflect this.

Appsfire’s rankings determined that the best free iPhone app ever is Instagram, and the best paid iPhone app of all time is WhatsApp Messenger. As of March, when Apple released its own top iPhone apps, its data shows the No. 1 free app was Facebook, while the No. 1 paid was Angry Birds (Apple doesn’t differentiate between games and non-games in its rankings the way Appsfire does).

Source: Appsfire

See Appsfire’s slide deck for the full list.

The point of these alternative rankings is to show that there are other ways to find good quality apps beyond going by what has been heavily downloaded — which can, and has been, easily gamed. App discovery is a serious problem for all mobile app stores, but Apple has the toughest challenge because of sheer volume: there more than 650,000 apps available for iOS. And even with Apple’s lists, “starter kits,” genre highlights and editor’s picks, digging through those can be exhausting. That’s where Appsfire and other companies like it hope to be of service. For more on the app discovery conundrum, see my GigaOM Pro report (subscription required).

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Appsfire builds a page rank system to score apps

Ryan Kim — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:07:10 +0000

App discovery service Appsfire has been working on helping consumers find quality mobile apps, but it believes it can make the job even simpler. The company on Wednesday is introducing App Scores, a new way of measuring an iPhone app’s worth against simple a Metacritic-like scale. The automated system works constantly throughout the day takes into account dozens of signals and comes up with a number from 1 (bad) to 100 (outstanding) that should help inform people’s download decisions.

The system is designed to overcome many of the limitations in discovering apps today. Apps Scores takes into account the consistent rankings of an app in up to 123 of Apple’s iTunes App Stores around the world. It examines the consistency, frequency and velocity of ratings taken from each of those stores, and it uses a Klout-like system to determine the reputation and track record of each developer. Then it combines those three main criteria with dozens of other signals such as mentions on Twitter and Facebook and on technology and review sites. The scores can be found on Appsfire.com and on the Appsfire Deals iPhone app. It will appear soon on the main Appsfire app.

Ouriel Ohayon, the founder of Appsfire, said this system has been in the works for two years and is a more reliable way for consumers to understand the quality of an app. He said in a blog post that current rankings are limited to only 200 top apps and the system can be gamed. Ratings and reviews can also be manipulated and are usually unhelpful for new apps. He added the App Stores are designed to give a local view, not a global view of an app’s performance.

App Scores can give users the big-picture view on apps and it can help users in specific situations, Ohayon said. For example, it can explain if a new app is good even if there are few ratings or reviews. And it can surface older and less popular apps that are high quality but just not well known. And it can also show when an app is low quality despite a high ranking or good reviews and ratings. That can help consumers see through some of the marketing games that some app developers engage in.

“Users don’t have to know all the details behind it – the same way they don’t have to know why a search results appear #1 in Google search engine. They will know instantly an app is good or not,” Ohayon said.

Developers could still try to game App Scores though Ohayon said it would take a lot of consistent work to keep up an app’s score. And he said the system is built to identify suspicious activity, such as a new app getting thousands of instant reviews. Appsfire also has labels for apps that are clones or are “low utility” apps, that provide some novelty but little lasting value.

Since the system is built on an algorithm, it needs good data to come up with results. So there is still the possibility for bad apps to slip through and the system’s performance can be limited right after the release of an app. But App Scores can get going within hours of an app’s release and start figuring out how to score it.

As I’ve said before, the app discovery game is still in its early stages and with so many apps available, there is a lot of opportunity in trying to help people find good apps. Apple has recognized its own limitations and has moved to address it with the purchase of Chomp. I think the idea of a score can appeal to many app shoppers, giving people a quick snapshot about whether an app is worth their time. I end up downloading apps based on their rankings sometimes, but realize later that its ranking didn’t reflect its real quality.

If Appsfire can help stop those cases from happening, it will save people some unnecessary downloads. But we have to see if this actually works. There’s a lot of moving parts but we should be able to see relatively quickly whether the scores are pointing toward quality apps or not. I don’t know that some of the top developers will see a big boost but it could be a boon for lesser known dev teams, whose apps often get lost in the shuffle. And it should be a big help for developers on Android, which is set to get the scores in the coming weeks.

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Apple kills Chomp for Android

Om Malik — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:50:36 +0000

Apple acquired app discovery service Chomp earlier this year, betting that it would help make app discovery easier and better on its iTunes Appstore. The casualty of that acquisition is the Chomp for Android app which seems to have been discontinued. It is hard to figure out what is going to happen to Chomp’s deal with Verizon. Anyway, the upside of Chomp for Android being put out to pasture is that it means less competition for rival app discovery platforms such as AppsFire and others, who can work with carriers for better app discovery on their Android stores.

Chomp.com before the acqusition:

Chomp.com today:

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Appsfire offers developers an in-app notification inbox

Ryan Kim — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:45 +0000

Facebook and Foursquare have their own in-app notification inboxes that help alert users to updates, new friend requests and other news and activity. But the process is hard for many developers to build, and most apps don’t offer such a feature. Now Appsfire, an app discovery platform, is launching a new free service called App Booster that allows developers to create a simple two-way inbox inside their apps to help establish a communication channel between developers and users.

The idea is to give developers an unobtrusive way to talk back and forth with their app users, so they can share important information, promote their other apps and obtain feedback. This can be an important way to maintain engagement and retain users, who studies have shown are quick to discard apps.

Developers who integrate Appsfire’s App Booster SDK, which takes about 20 minutes and is built for iOS right now, can create an inbox that sits inside their app that uses a bubble icon to notify a user when they have a message. When they tap on the icon, users can see their list of messages from the developer. Tapping on a message can provide more information, a link to an app store or a website, or pull up a form so they can email back a message to the developer. Developers could use the inbox to welcome new users, notify them of updates, provide tips about the latest updates, warn users about app maintenance issues, cross-promote an app, or invite users to provide feedback, share online or rate an app.

Many apps currently use push notifications to engage users and notify them. But Ouriel Ohayon, the founder of Appsfire, said half the time users don’t agree to receive notifications. Some developers turn to ad networks to promote some of their other apps, ask for email addresses or use services such as Crittercism, which can create a support forum for users to help answer questions about crashes and other problems. Others rely on “i” or “more” buttons to offer more information. PlayHaven offers a marketing platform that can insert HTML5 windows inside an app that can be programmed with ads and messages.

But Ohayon said developers haven’t had a simple way to create an inbox inside an app that encourages communication between a user and a developer. He said that can be critical in guiding and engaging users.

“Think of it as the equivalent of a newsletter for applications; instead of being sent by email it’s sent inside the app by the developer. You will be able to reply to the developer. This communication loop is not happening,” said Ohayon. “We are enabling that situation which is really required and demanded by users but not expressed.”

Ohayon said developers can send out and manage messages using a simple dashboard, where they can compose notifications and target who receives them. In early tests with a few developers, Ohayon said App Booster has improved engagement by up to 50 percent and experienced click-through rates of at least 15 percent and up to 50 percent. He said the key is that it is not intrusive but still a personal and effective way to talk to users.
Ohayon built the system to solve Appsfire’s problems first and is hoping other developers can find value in the same solution. That could help turn them on to Appsfire’s paid app discovery tool, which is the company’s main product.

I think App Booster should be appealing for users. Some apps send too many push notifications or send out a lot of requests to rate apps. I would prefer something more subtle that allows me to pull messages when I want to see them. And for developers, it still allows them to open a two-way dialogue right inside the app. That’s helpful. Instead of relying on getting email addresses or using Facebook or Twitter, a developer can communicate from within the app itself. Developers should obviously avoid spamming users, but if they provide real, valuable messages, users will likely see this as an asset and something that improves their relationship with the developer.

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Appsfire taps Siri for voice-activated app discovery

Ryan Kim — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:08:19 +0000

Siri is not available to developers, and there’s no guarantee it will be. But it hasn’t stopped developers from tapping its power. Appsfire, an app discovery service, has created a little hack that allows iPhone 4S users to find apps with their voice.

Users tell Siri to send an email to Ask Appsfire and in the subject line they can put in the keywords they’re looking for, like “personal finance apps” or “apps for Halloween.” You’ll need to create a contact for Ask Appsfire’s email address first. Leave the body of the email blank, then send it off. Appsfire receives the email, comes up with appropriate answers and emails back the best suggestions, which can take you directly to the App Store for downloading.

If a user has already downloaded an Appsfire App or App Deals app on their phone and signed in though Facebook Connect, they can get a push notification for every matching result. If you don’t have an iPhone 4S, you can still access Ask Appsfire by emailing it the old-fashioned way.

This is a simple fix that works because Appsfire has enabled its service to be accessed via email. But it shows how developers can get Siri to work for them to engage consumers. Ideally, developers will be able to have this built into iOS 5 or into the Appsfire apps, but until that happens, this is one way to leverage the ease of use of Siri.

Ouriel Ohayon, founder of Appsfire, said using Siri was more of a test to see how it can work, and the functionality was designed to help give consumers faster access to the App Store while on the go without having to go through a browsing list. He said until Apple opens up Siri, others will also be looking at this opportunity.

“Siri is a great add-on, and it would be so much better if it was open to developers. I think many services will try to hack it because it is convenient on the go,” he said.

I think Apple will have increasing requests from developers who want to leverage the intelligence of Siri. It’s a great opportunity to really empower a lot of apps if Siri can be embedded; it would help people interact with a lot more apps if they could connect using Siri instead of manually opening apps every time.

Take a look at a video of Ask Appsfire and Siri in action:

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Monetization on mobile can’t be like the web

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:08:23 +0000

GigaOM's Ryan Kim, Zephrin Lasker of Pontiflex, Brian Wong of Kiip, Keren Zemer of Appsfire , and William Hsu of AT&T at Mobilize 2011

Mobile advertising is a different beast than any advertising that came before, and the opportunities to measure engagement and even conversion may also influence advertising elsewhere. This may be a somewhat obvious conclusion, but in a panel on going beyond the CPM at the Mobilize 2011 conference in San Francisco participants got into details about how mobile will change advertising by becoming less like the web model and through better understanding of how mobile ads change and drive consumer behavior.

For example, William Hsu, SVP and Chief Product Officer at AT&T Interactive, indicated that the operators was looking at how to move beyond the YellowPages model of advertising to something more valuable and contextual such as television advertising. For him and for some other members of the panel, the opportunity presented by mobility was in being able to understand and track exactly how an ad on a phone might influence the end customers.

Brian Wong, the CEO of Kiip, explained that a campaign his company did for a “major national consumer electronics retailer with a yellow label,” resulted in 15 percent of people who won a coupon actually going into the store and buying something. Being able to track those results and offer that to advertisers can be confusing for ad firms but is attractive to the product company that hired the ad firm.

However, today, we’re still in a web-dominated world in part because ad firms and their clients understand that model. The result is developers who are trying to game the system and place ads next to areas on-screen where a consumer might click– even if it is an accidental click. Zephrin Lasker, CEO and co-founder of Pontiflex, noted that 50 percent of clicks are accidental.

This obviously upsets consumers, who don’t want to interrupt their gameplay with an accidental click, but it’s also elevating the click-through rate to levels it may not deserve. Hsu reminded the panel that click-throughs are really a proxy for how an ad might help the advertisers’ business grow. He predicted that in a year we will be able to track how an ad converts to traffic in a store and within 24 months we will be able to track it all the way through to purchase and the size of the purchase.

The rest of the panel was dominated by the idea that mobile can lead to the creation of an entirely new type of advertisement. While Wong called it “voodoo technology,” it’s clear that the combination of location, the deeply personal nature of a mobile device and better data tracking can create an entirely new and more effective way to get people to buy things. Unfortunately, no one on the panel discussed how users might react to all this high-tech effort to part them from their cash.

Watch live streaming video from mobilize2011 at livestream.com

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