Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

How to Make Your App Stand Out in the Crowd

What’s that? You have a shiny new app you want to tell people about?

Join the club: There are more than 900,000 apps in Apple’s App Store. Google’s Play store has a similar number.

And there are plenty of people who say they can help you get some exposure for your app. Some want to sell you advertising in other apps, others say they can help you get better reviews, or even improve your download rankings.

The good news is that the most effective app-distribution strategy doesn’t cost a dime.

So says Appnation, an app-centric conference producer that is branching out into research. All you have to do is make sure that everyone who uses your app loves it and tells their friends about it, and presto! You’ve got word of mouth, which is the way most people discover most of their apps:

Appnation discovery

That data comes from an online survey that Appnation and partner Reticle Research conducted in May. And if you like that, there’s plenty more where that came from.

For instance, Appnation thinks that the younger you are, the more likely you’ll be influenced by stuff you see in the App Store itself, like download rank, or reviews for individual apps. If you’re really young, that stuff could be nearly as important as what your pals say:

appnation discovery age

Given that the results are self-reported, there could be some wiggle room in the way you interpret this stuff.

And, alas, I don’t think the data will do anything to slow down the torrent of unsolicited emails I get each day asking me to promote/review/“consider” someone’s app. Which I’m sure is a very nice app, but is not something I’m going to look at, let alone write about.

Unless you are pitching me some sort of spam-filter app that works better than Google’s miserable Postini and its replacement. Then I’m all ears.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”