

Ask HN: Getting featured by Apple - mikek

I have an iOS app that I feel has great potential and I'm wondering what it would take to get featured by Apple.  After reading about Rovio and Angry Birds, it seems to me that having a publisher who has a relationship with Apple is one way.  And I'm sure that they pick things at their whim as well.  But, looking at the picks each week, it is clear that there is a lot of branded stuff that gets featured, and apps from well known companies.  And not a lot of apps from indie developers.  Is there anyone here who has been featured on Apple and could give me some insight as to how this works?
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arn
Apple staff pick featured on a weekly basis. I believe the new featured appear
on Thursday now. From my understanding, they are generally hand picked.

If you are a known publisher, they seem to pay attention to those. Big name
titles, like Madden I've seen featured on launch.

Lots of indie developers also get featured, and my understanding of it is that
they pay attention to the same outlets other people do. That means iPhone app
review sites and anything that gets you media exposure also brings your app to
their attention.

I run TouchArcade, which is an iPhone game review site, and I've heard that
some devs have been told by Apple that they were seen on the site prior to
featuring. That's not to say that it's TouchArcade specific, but I think it's
true for any significant exposure.

So the answer is basically, there's no magic in as a small indie dev. Try to
get as much exposure as you can, and you may be picked.

~~~
sagacity
I guess getting a lot of exposure would result in to higher download numbers
and possibly, they look at these (the dl numbers too) to gauge the
'featured'-ability of apps?

