Finally! A Great Way to Discover New Apps: App Check Ins
By: Hillel Fuld
As of last week, our brand new SDK, Appboy+, which we have been working on for months, is official. The new Appboy SDK is simple and easy to integrate, it takes around ten minutes to add to an app.
After having worked in the mobile industry for many years, we understand the competitive nature and the challenges involved in developing mobile apps. From our understanding, there are two primary challenges facing mobile developers, monetization and discovery.
Our new SDK does not address the monetization issue, but it does offer the most comprehensive solution for developers to get their apps discovered and for users to discover new apps. So what is it?
Simply put, the Appboy+ SDK is check ins for apps. You know, Foursquare has check ins for locations, Appboy now has check ins for apps. What is this good for? First let’s understand it from a user’s perspective.
The Apple App Store is absolutely flooded with apps. There are over 300,000 apps as of the last released numbers. That is a whole lotta apps. So besides the few apps that are lucky enough to get featured by Apple and the ones that make it to the top of its category, how are users expected to find new apps that truly interest them?
Many companies have and continue to address this problem, but they all involve the user downloading that company’s app to get suggestions. The Appboy SDK is the first solution that offers you iOS recommendations based on what apps your friends are using, and brings the recommendations to you!
So how does it work? A user opens an app and is presented with the AB+ interface asking the user if he/she wants to check in to that app. If the user checks in, that user’s social graphs are then notified that he/she is using that app. The assumption is that if you are friends with someone on Facebook or following someone on Twitter, you have at least a few things in common and you would be interested to know what apps that person is using.
I, for one, find Foursquare check ins appearing in my Twitter stream to be annoying and irrelevant. Why do I care that a person half way across the world, just checked in to their local pizza store? When it comes to app check ins and the proliferation of smartphone usage, I would be happy to get app recommendations from my friends and connections in my Twitter or Facebook stream.
From a developer’s perspective, the Appboy SDK is a no brainer. If you have an app or are thinking about creating one, you have probably heard about the challenge of getting your app noticed and downloaded.
With the Appboy SDK and a ten minute integration process, developers finally have an effective means of getting their app noticed by thousands of people almost instantly. Once you integrate the SDK, anyone that uses the app and checks in, automatically notifies all their friends and followers that they are using your app.
In addition to the exposure, the Appboy SDK allows you to interact with the users of your apps and run promotions and bonuses for your top users. Of course, the more a user checks in to your app, the more badgets they unlock, again similar to Foursquare.
At the end of the day, everyone now recognizes how huge the mobile apps space is, and how much bigger it is going to get. What most people do not realize is that creating, maintaining, and successfully selling a mobile app, is not a simple task. In order to make it, developers really need an edge that will help them stand out and that was the premise of the Appboy+ SDK.
The Appboy SDK is available now for iOS, you can read about it and access it here.
Check out the promo video below and as always, we are very interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback on the new Appboy SDK. If you are a mobile developer and have any questions about the SDK, feel free to send an email to Thorren@appboy.com.
