

Tiny Australian startup gets 250,000 downloads of its app in just 4 days - discovr
http://discovr.info/2011/07/250k-downloads-of-discovr-apps-in-the-last-4-days/

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meterplech
Full text of the page in case it's down:

Just over a month ago we launched our new app Discovr Apps to help you find
apps for your iPhone and iPad. Everything has gone really well and we’re very
excited to announce some of our most recent stats:

* In the last 4 days alone, Discovr Apps has had more than a quarter of a million new downloads (256,719 downloads in 4 days).

* In the same 4 day period we’ve served more than 4.8 million requests in the app, averaging more than 1 million requests per day.

* On a single day in that period, our users spent the equivalent total time of 9 months and 1 day using the app.

* Discovr Apps also went straight to #1 app in 17 countries including the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Germany.

* We’ve released three updates in the 6 weeks since launch, and we’re very fortunate to have an average App Store rating of 4.5 stars.

* We’ve also seen an entirely new business model emerge in the last few weeks, with lots of developers wanting to advertise in the app.

All in all, we’re completely blown away by the response. We’re a small team
based in Perth, Australia, and we just can’t believe it.

Thankyou so much to everyone who has had fun with the app. We’re just getting
started. Get in touch to tell us what you want to see next!

The Filter Squad Team Stu, Matt, Tamas, Ben, and Dave

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bullseye
Perhaps not as easy as it used to be, it's always encouraging to see that
there are still apps in the app store that can pull huge numbers on release.

On a side note, I wonder which Lodsys patent this one violates? :)

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jxj310
Looks like they built on AWS to achieve that scale. Pretty cool.

[http://discovr.info/2011/07/scaling-a-rails-webservice-on-
aw...](http://discovr.info/2011/07/scaling-a-rails-webservice-on-
awsec2-for-a-1-iphone-and-ipad-app/)

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paisible
I'd be very interested in knowing what the team did prior to launch in terms
of marketing / viral / PR strategy to get these numbers. Impressive!

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tannerc
Apparently nothing. They printed some stickers and hoodies and that's it
(according to the blog post, anyway).

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Hisoka
Some simple Googling gives me lots of articles on LifeHacker, Techcrunch,
Mashable, etc. It's clear they reached out to PR months before the release.

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18pfsmt
This is an interesting point, especially considering they specifically
mentioned their lack of a marketing plan. Somebody got on the phone/plane at
some point, or otherwise utilized existing connections. I took a screenshot[1]
of the results (it appears they launched in mid-June), and most startups I've
seen will kill for that kind of covdedrage.

[1]<http://i51.tinypic.com/2d7bqcj.png>

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krmmalik
Are they profiting from this App in some way? Not to be a debbie downer, but
surely for an App this popular they must have a plan to reap some financial
benefit, but i didnt see one in action?

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18pfsmt
From the post:

 _"_ We’ve also seen an entirely new business model emerge in the last few
weeks, with lots of developers wanting to advertise in the app." _

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smackfu
More info on rankings history and such:

[http://appshopper.com/entertainment/discovr-apps-discover-
ne...](http://appshopper.com/entertainment/discovr-apps-discover-new-apps)

Wonder why they went free a week ago.

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stucksimon
When did they go #1 in the US? I don't see that at all.

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smackfu
Yeah, I noticed that but technically the charts only go 30 days back, so it's
theoretically possible they hit #1 at some point. Although doubtful since it
was a paid app then.

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Hisoka
What is the criteria for ranking #1? Is it just a daily ranking for total # of
downloads that day or what?

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smackfu
Apple doesn't say. They tweaked the ranking algorithm recently though, to
include usage in addition to downloads.

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bignoggins
where did you hear this? As far as I know top paid is still total # of
downloads over a 3-4 day period.

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smackfu
Maybe they only tweaked the free?

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bignoggins
my apps are currently ranked #2 and #4 in their respective categories but
looking at usage stats I highly highly doubt that is factored in. Seems to be
downloads only.

