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Popular Android Apps

Akshay Sura — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:14:00 +0000

The top android application a few months ago should give a very plain message to developers – Namco’s PacMan (yes, the classic arcade game) was the top Android download.

Although android smartphones can be powerful web browsers and business tools, many users like to utilize them for gaming as much as anything else, so free games that collect customer data, promote your brand or give customers access to products for purchase are popular development solutions.

MySpace mobile is another highly popular android app, as is the Weather Channel. But what about non-proprietary kinds of apps, the kinds you can develop to promote your business?

Look at the Free Dictionary, another highly popular download, and consider what other similar services customers might like. Translation dictionaries and phrase translators are extremely useful and popular, for example. Provide G1 customers a quick service they can’t get somewhere else, or they can get better from you.

A version of the horoscope might be a winner, as the Daily Horoscope app is one of the top downloads for android, as is Ringdroid, that gives you the ability to create your own telephone ringtones.

Wallpaper and background programs are highly popular, as are shopping programs like Compare Everywhere and ShopSavvy. Both allow you to use your phone as a barcode scanner, searching online and comparing local prices.

Games are the top download for all smartphones, android or Apple, and a version of a popular game or a new, “addictive” game may be just the development project for your business.

Popular downloads besides PacMan include solitaire versions, slide puzzles (easy to incorporate your logo and an addictive style of game), poker in various varieties, snake, puzzles and brain teasers, trivia, tic tac toe and chess.

Providing cool features and moves for your customized android game with win you downloads, revenue and potential customers.

For example, some of the chess games allow players to choose landscape or portrait orientation and to make moves using a trackball, the keyboard or the touchscreen. One game will take note of the piece you have selected and then highlight all possible moves by that piece, allowing the player to strategize. One will allow a reversal of several moves, so the player can go back and correct a mistake or poor move as well.

Innovative ideas will win recognition in this burgeoning market, where there are hundreds of thousands of downloads to G1 smartphones each day. For a platform that only opened in late October of 2008, the android app market is a huge one with lots of potential for any business.

Politics Never Smelled So Tweet

By Saul Hansell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:27:23 +0000

If Senators John McCain and Barack Obama actually do debate Friday night, you will be able to watch what thousands of viewers think of their verbal sparring almost as they talk. Twitter, the service that lets techno-hipsters broadcast their thoughts in 140-character bursts, is setting up a special politics page to make it easy to tune into the chatter.

At midnight Thursday, the company is launching election.twitter.com, the first specialized section of its site. Like Twitter’s main service, it is dominated by a big white box. But instead of typing an answer to What are you doing? the election site asks, What do you think?

Below that box is a constantly scrolling display of the thoughts (called tweets in Twitterspeak) of other Twitter users. These include all the tweets entered on the election page as well as those entered in any other part of the service with obvious election-related phrases, such as Palin.

Twitter was started as a way for people to communicate with friends and acquaintances, but it is increasingly serving as a window on public opinion, too. You can now use Twitter’s search engine to see what people think about anything from the Wall Street bailout to beer.

We have all these people who use Twitter every day to react to what is going on, said Biz Stone, the company’s co-founder and creative director. Major events, such as concerts, TV shows and natural disasters, tend to prompt people to tweet.

We saw off-the-charts messages per second during the acceptance speeches of the political conventions, Mr. Stone said.

By creating the election site, Twitter is giving people an easy window into all of those political tweets and encouraging more of them. While the page may be of particular interest during the debates, it will be up for political junkies at all times.

Twitter is following MySpace and Facebook, which have created ways for their users to connect with each other over the election.

The election page also has links to the Twitter feeds of the McCain and Obama campaigns, although neither have been very active on the service of late.

There are also links to see tweets about the major presidential and vice presidential candidates and a list of phrases culled from recent tweets that represent hot topics.

And if the Friday night debate is canceled, there will probably be a lot of tweets about that, too.

15 Features Your Site Doesn’t Need

admin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:39:21 +0000

The worst mistake in internet marketing? Making things too complicated. It pumps up costs, slows site launches and keeps you offline when you could be online, selling stuff.

Who makes that mistake? You do. When you insist that that one feature is so important you can't live without it, you're killing yourself. If you can get 90% of the function with 10% of the effort, shouldn't you?

So, here's a list of features I think your site can probably do without, at least for now:

Integration with your inventory management system. If you're already selling lots online, great! Spend the fifty grand it'll take to synchronize your store with your inventory system. Otherwise, forget it. Put it on hold.
A fancy content management system (CMS). A full-featured, enterprise CMS is a great tool when you need it. But do you really need it? If you have a staff of two, you don't. Use Wordpress or Movable Type, instead.
Community content. Yah, community content is trendy as heck. But you don't need to build your own bloody city. Before you spend the time and shell out the cash to add community content, ask yourself: Do you need to build the community yourself? Couldn't you use Facebook? Or MySpace? Or something else? Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't need to.
A talking, walking spokesperson. I'm sorry, but no one needs a little video person that walks onscreen and starts babbling about how wonderful this product is. I go online to get away from that. So save the cash. Don't add a virtual spokesperson. Plus, they're creepy as hell.
Video. I love online video. It's super-valuable to the right business. Is that your business? If you can't get your message across without motion or a 'face to face' human element, use video. Otherwise, save the money and time.
Credit card processing. If you're selling online you'll need to process credit cards. But setting up a merchant account with your bank will make you wonder if you're in a Kafka novel. Instead, use a service like PayPal. Later, when you're selling in volumes where a .5% reduction in costs is important, you can set up the merchant account. Or, even better, get a lackey to do it for you.
A custom store. Yes, you want your store to look just so. If you can save thousands of dollars and weeks of work, though, why not compromise just a little and use a prebuilt store like Prostores or Volusion? Be smart. Get selling.
A custom lead management system. You want a CRM system that lets you manage 3,000 leads a month. Problem is, you don't have any leads yet. Try Salesforce or HighRise. You can hook 'em right up to the contact form on your web site and get 90% of what you want at 5% the cost in dollars and sanity.
Web 2.0 features. Whatever the hell those are. If you really need a feature, trust me, you won't need to pigeonhole it with some trendy phrase. You'll know you need one-page checkout, or smart form validation, or a puffy logo that looks like it'll purr when you pet it.
Multiple languages. Think about your audience first. Do you have a sizable group of folks who don't speak English in that audience? If yes, spend the money to translate. If not, stop right there.
Your own server. Yeah. No. Start off in a shared, 'virtual' hosting environment.
A live webcam. Thank heavens, these seem to be going away. I don't really want to see what you're doing at your desk 24/7.
A 'wish list'. It's nice to save your favorite products in a little folder all your own. But is that why you buy? I don't think so. Add the wish list later.
A 'virtual office'. You don't need to make your web site look like a real office. I'm on the internet because I don't want to go to your office! Give me a site that loads fast and gives me the shortest possible route between my question and your answer.
A 'virtual mall'. See the previous item, and don't make me slap you.

When you're deciding on features for your site, analyze the costs and benefits carefully. Consider whether you want a feature because you think it's important, or because it'll really help your audience.

Close Encounters Of The Republican Kind: McCainSpace Relaunches

Erick Schonfeld — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:03:37 +0000

Why is it that both political campaigns feel the need to have their own social networks. Barack Obama has my.barackobama.com and John McCain has McCainSpace, which just relaunched with a new design from KickApps after failing massively on its own. The new McCainSpace design itself is functional enough, giving McCain supporters a central place to discuss election issues via blogs, forums, videos, and photos. But I’m not sure who the site is supposed to appeal to other than lonely Young Republicans who don’t have any friends on Facebook.

The site is aimed at “Generation08,” presumably the young’uns that the campaign is having a hard time reaching. The logo and default photo image remind me of something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (remember that scene with the alien light coming through the doorway?) And then there’s the welcome video of McCain on the homepage (embedded below), saying “Greetings my friends.” Greetings, gramps.

Creating a separate social network makes little sense in the age of MySpace and Facebook. But McCain isn’t doing so good on those sites. He has only 226,000 “supporters” on Facebook, compared to 1.4 million for Obama. But maybe that’s just because he’s more of a MySpace guy (note the similarity of the McCainSpace name). But even there, McCain only has 66,665 “friends” versus 467,814 for Obama.

Facebook v. MySpace In The U.S. Market: The Music Factor

Michael Arrington — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:23:56 +0000

Facebook is now the largest social network in the world. But they continue to trail MySpace by a massive 36 million users in the U.S., and at current growth rates it will take them 18 years to overtake them.

Most of Facebook’s growth is international, where they’ve executed on a brilliant strategy for quickly rolling out localized versions of sites by getting their users to do the translation work for them (MySpace, by contrast, expands via a command-and-control infrastructure that puts people on the ground in each new international market). But the commercial value of some of those international users is far less than the U.S., the UK, Japan and a handful of other countries with robust online advertising markets.

Is Music Perpetuating MySpace’s Lead In The U.S.?

Music is MySpace’s territory. They host millions of artist and band pages, and one of the first thing any new band does is create their MySpace page. MySpace says 35 million people per month visit their music sites, including MySpace Music and various artist pages. Some artists have millions of “friends” and the pages allow streaming music, artist control over the look and feel of the site, etc.

Facebook, by contrast, has no real internal music strategy. Artists can set up Pages to promote themselves, but the pages are no different to any other fan pages (for example, no streaming music) – there is nothing music or artist specific on the site.

Next month MySpace is rolling out a new music joint venture with the major labels that will have music streaming, playlists, downloads, merchandise sales, ring tones and other features. It’s not only likely to be a major destination site for music but also a significant revenue driver for MySpace and the labels (a little may trickle down to the artists as well).

Music is a huge part of what drove historical MySpace growth, and I believe it is a major factor in perpetuating their lead over Facebook in the U.S. market.

Facebook’s Response To MySpace Music: iLike

Facebook doesn’t appear to be engaging in any direct music strategy at all. Instead, they’ve placed their bet on iLike, a third party application that has no streaming deal (they piggyback on Rhapsody). Last month Facebook announced that they’ll give iLike special access to Facebook through their new Great Apps program. All official and most off record messaging we’re hearing is that iLike is Facebook’s music partner for the long run.

OpenSocial Now Reaches 350 Million Users, And Growing

Erick Schonfeld — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:52 +0000

Six months ago, OpenSocial was nothing but a list of promised partnerships. But the social network application platform backed by Google has made a lot of progress since then as those partners started to go live with their OpenSocial Apps. First there was MySpace and Orkut, then Hi5, and most recently Friendster. All told, if you add up the various social networks that are now live with OpenSocial, it reaches a total of 350 million users. And it will soon reach 500 million, as four more social networks and services prepare to launch by the end of of September.

Google’s Joe Kraus gave me an update today on OpenSocial’s progress. He wouldn’t say which partners would launch next, but by the size of that pink bar in the graph above, one of them is relatively large—about the same size as Orkut. (My guess is that it will be either Bebo or Six Apart). He also mentioned some partners, such as imeem, launched without ever contacting Google (thanks to Apache Shindig) and that at this point only 10 percent of the engineers hashing out the OpenSocial specifications are from Google.

So how many OpenSocial apps are actually being used? There are about 4,500 different apps so far, which have been installed more than 150 million times. I couldn’t get daily active user numbers across all OpenSocial partners, but for Hi5 about 50 percent of members use an OpenSocial app at least once a day. There are 1,800 OpenSocial apps on hi5 alone, which have been installed 66 million times, so that may be representative of OpenSocial usage in general.

Barack Obama wins Web 2.0 race

John Brandon — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Barack Obama has won! Barack Obama has won! That’s right, in a nearly uncontested race for digital superiority, the upstart Democratic presidential nominee has obliterated John McCain at the digital polls, trouncing his opponent with an Internet onslaught that is almost embarrassing for the Republican nominee.

Here’s some interesting tidbits from the race:

1. On FaceBook, Obama is so far ahead that the race is over. He has over 1.3M friends compared to a paltry 200K for McCain. All things being equal, the McCain FaceBook site looks like it was designed by an eighth grade civics class and Obama’s looks remarkably clean and professional.

2. MySpace, which seems a little more focused on media distribution than anything else these days, also reveals an obvious winner. Obama’s site is more personal with blog entries and lots of doodads: posters, buttons, videos. McCain’s site looks almost comatose with few updates and a cluttered, hurried design. Obama has almost 500K friends on MySapce and McCain only has about 63K.

Facebook Stands Atop Social Networking World

Renay San Miguel — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:16:58 +0000

Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the top global social network with 132 million unique visitors for a staggering 153 percent growth rate, according to comScore. MySpace is second at 113 million visitors, and Hi5 grew its global audience 100 percent to land at 56 million unique visitors. A new report from the online tracking company shows global usage of social networking sites growing 25 percent since June 2007. The U.S., however, saw the phenomenon cool off somewhat to 9 percent growth year-over-year.

Think of social networking’s worldwide growth as a variation of performance artist Laurie Anderson’s song, “Language is a Virus.” Language/translation efforts by the likes of Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo have helped the contagion of social networking spread worldwide, with comScore reporting growth rates of 66 percent in the Middle East/Africa, 35 percent in Europe, 33 percent in Latin America and 23 percent in Asia.

“I think the scalability of some of these U.S. brands into international markets has been a big factor,” Andrew Lipman, comScore senior analyst told TechNewsWorld. “Specifically, if you look at Facebook and Hi5, what they’re doing in terms of foreign language interface translation and their emphasis on cultural relevance in each of the markets they’re expanding to has helped them grow pretty dramatically across all global regions.”

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing

Erick Schonfeld — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:59:16 +0000

Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing.

(At least among the major social networks). According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook’s visitor growth is up 153 percent on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3 percent growth for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5 (100 percent) and Friendster (50 percent), despite each of those being less than half the size of Facebook. Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41 percent and 32 percent growth, respectively.

If you break down Facebook’s growth into regions, its presence in North America is still growing at a healthy 38 percent rate (with 49 million visitors a month). Europe (with 35 million visitors a month) is growing nearly ten times as fast. And growth in rest of the world is on an even faster tear (403 percent growth in the Middle East and Africa, 458 percent growth in Asia Pacific, 10,555 percent growth in Latin America), albeit from a smaller base.

Much of these huge growth numbers come from the fact that Facebook had hardly no presence in many of these regions until recently when it started its major push to translate the site to other languages. A year ago, it had only one million uniques a month in all of Latin America, three million in the Middle East and Africa, and four million in all of Asia Pacific. When you look at it that way, 10,555 percent growth isn’t as amazing as the raw numbers would suggest. And within these regions, it still has a lot of work to do.

LivePlace To Launch Photo-Realistic Virtual World Rendered In The Cloud

Jason Kincaid — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:42:06 +0000

LivePlace.com has posted a video displaying a very impressive render of a 3D virtual world called City Space. At this point very little is known about LivePlace, other than that the WHOIS lists the domain’s owner as Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace. Note: It appears that in the 20 minutes since I spoke to Greenspan about this post, someone took LivePlace down. The video embed below still works.

The other nugget of information found in the video is that the game is running on OTOY, the 3D engine that renders graphics in the cloud. The technology allows relatively weak computers (or even mobile phones) to display incredibly detailed graphics comparable to those seen in Hollywood movies.

The video shows a massive virtual city filled with towering skyscrapers, parks, user-customized apartments and houses, public meeting places, subways, and everything else you might expect in a metropolitan area, all beautifully rendered by the OTOY engine. The game also features impressive real time lighting, reflection, and weather effects that rival those seen in detailed 3D games (and even some movies).

At this point it appears that gameplay will be focused on human avatars, who can own their own living spaces and offices, buy and sell goods at a virtual mall, and interact with each other in public places.

While there are a number of online games that offer impressive graphics (though none of this caliber), the real potential behind LivePlace and the OTOY engine is the cloud-based rendering engine, which allows games on almost any computer to play without needing a powerful graphics card. OTOY has been developed to work in any browser without a plugin, which makes the barrier for entry into this virtual world much lower than Second Life. Of course, we have no idea when City Space will actually launch, so it’s far to early to hail it as the second coming of social online worlds.