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Airpush Responds to Privacy Concerns, Requires Opt-In
4 points by asherisaac on April 29, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
A few weeks ago Airpush launched as the world’s first mobile ad network based on push notifications. In that short period, we have had over 5,000 Android developers join the platform and developer satisfaction has been overwhelming.

Over the past few days it has become evident that, despite satisfaction amongst our developers, some end-users have expressed concern about receiving push notification ads without their prior consent. To date, we have provided developers with a Permissions API to implement custom opt-in / opt-out procedures, but we have not made it mandatory.

In response to this feedback, we are modifying our SDK to require opt-in from all users prior to delivering push notification ads. The opt-in will appear as a dialog box upon initial launch of the app, and developers will no longer be able to build their own opt-in. This change will be complete next week.

We regret that we didn’t launch Airpush with this developer requirement, but we recognize the need to respond swiftly to feedback from the Android community. We believe this change will address the concerns of users who don’t want push notification ads.

We look forward to continuing our mission of helping Android developers achieve dramatically superior earnings via push notification ads.

Sincerely,

Asher Delug CEO, Airpush Inc. www.Airpush.com




Developer satisfaction has been overwhelming? That's now what I'm hearing from them. And what about their users?

It's nice that you've taken the time to respond to people's concerns , but your business model is still flawed--Even with the lastest update.

For starters, you can no longer tell developers that your ads will reach 100% of their user base. With a one-ad limit per day regardless of how many apps they have, this becomes a terrible choice for developers to earn money.

Not that this was ever a good idea. Any kind of Ad that shows up in the background when a user is not interacting with the app is malware, no matter how you try to spin it.

I hope Google will act swiftly to end this.


HN is not your blog. Don't stick your press releases here.

As a Android user: Thanks for responding to user feedback, and while the changes are an improvement, any app that touches my notification bar for non honest purposes will get instantly deleted. Back when I had an ipod touch, there was some app that did a similar thing (think it was either TTR 2 or IM+), and issued a pop up notification with ads and also got instantly deleted.




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