
App.net - sahillavingia
http://app.net/
======
salman89
So I actually tried out this service today for the company I am working at.

I do not see much value being created from the current offering. Sure, it
makes a pretty page and gives you analytics for people being sent to that
particular page. This really doesn't solve a problem though. I would say that
about half the people discover apps through the app store itself. Developers
needs analytics in the app store, not on some redirect page. As it stands,
this is just another layer.

I really did like the feature that a user can send an SMS to their phone
number for an install link. And that button can be replicated anywhere. This
is pretty useful. Everything else, I don't see why appstores can't integrate
those features into their appstores.

What value is this creating for me as a developer? A custom app landing page?
I could have done that myself. Analytics? I can throw Google Analytics onto a
custom landing page. Can I track how many people hit my app.net/domain page
and then proceeded to install? Nope, but Google/Apple can certainly create
that value (and maybe even charge for it).

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revorad
Edit: I eat my words below because I didn't know what I was talking about.
Thanks for pointing out bruceboughton and mbarr.

<uninformed>The "send to phone" button on app store webpages is a simple
feature Google and Apple can copy straight from Amazon's Kindle playbook. If I
couldn't send book samples to my Kindle while browsing Amazon on my computer,
I'd miss out on checking out and buying a lot of books.</uninformed>

~~~
mbarr
That's been possible on Android Market since the website was launched in
February:

[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/02/introducing-
android...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/02/introducing-android-
market-website.html)

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inmygarage
Absolutely _love_ the SMS feature.

I think what some people forget is that there are only about 500K iphone apps
in the app store (about the same for Android? not sure on that), and the store
is barely three years old. Over the next few years I bet that number is going
to explode, providing a huge opportunity for a service like app.net.

~~~
unwiredben
Where have I seen that SMS feature before? I think it's been a key feature of
the webOS app pages for the last year and a half, as seen at
[http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.rovio.a...](http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.rovio.angrybirds)

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benatkin
The site is really well done, and the selection of launch partners is great. I
like the App.net app pages much better than the Apple app pages that try to
launch iTunes. I don't think it matters much whether it's nameofapp.app.net or
app.net/nameofapp.

~~~
dalton
Thank you very much.

I spent quite a bit of time before we launched talking to app developers
across the spectrum of size of company, and types of app.

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jrmg
Seems a bit weird to me that they're effectively selling URLs of the form
app.net/appname rather than selling subdomains like appname.app.net.

~~~
keyle
Seems a bit weird to me that they link to fake examples to real apps in their
"Featured apps". Unless they got permission?

EDIT: They are legitimate testimonials.

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dalton
Hey this is Dalton. I absolutely got permission from every single app
developer on the featured apps page.

~~~
keyle
Oh, very good. Maybe featured apps should be renamed to Featured Examples?

Just because if I google for Evernote iphone app, it takes me to the
"legitimate" website of Evernote, not <http://app.net/evernote>

~~~
csomar
I never knew that Google takes you directly to the official website of a
product. What I know is that google ranks websites based on keywords, links,
content... (SEO) and show you (typically) the 10 first most pertinent results.

Being the first on Google doesn't mean that you are the official/legitimate
website of that product.

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davidedicillo
As they say, the ones making money during the gold rush, are the one selling
picks.

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the_unknown
Having recently built a mini site to host info about an iPhone app I can
appreciate where the idea is going... unfortunately their pricing seems fairly
out of place with what's being offered.

I built a small supporting site and tossed it up on Google Apps (really just
plain HTML) for free hosting... yes, I needed to set the template and Google
Analytics code myself but is that really worth the $2.50 - $4.00 a month?

Might I humbly suggest a small change... bump the free level to 5 apps so that
I get hooked on the ease of use and simplicity of your model then group
together upgrades in wide bands... maybe 5-10 for the second tier and 10-50
for the third tier.

Oh, and get Windows Phone support in there... there likely isn't much demand
but it is my preferred platform and I'd like it to succeed. :)

~~~
dalton
That's good feedback, thanks.

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canistr
This is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. I was going to hire a designer to
make a simple splash page like this for my app but it probably would have
costs a lot more than "free" just to get that done including the hosting.

Thanks!

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simonsarris
By the name alone I was expecting a Microsoft App store

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fascinated
Dalton, why can't I upload and play music or view photos from app.net? I am
confused

~~~
dalton
thanks for troll, anthony :p

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xelfer
Great site, well done! I found a few problems with your templates you may want
to look at (especailly with a longer app name):

<http://i.imgur.com/hGpwU.png>

<http://i.imgur.com/DgnnK.png> (I had to highlight the text to see it)

<http://i.imgur.com/WjsKe.png>

~~~
dalton
you are right, that doesn't look great.

Could you try reducing the font size of the Title text size (under the
"Styles" tab in the theme editor)?

~~~
xelfer
Did that! looks much better now, thanks!

When trying to upload a second screenshot I'm getting this (google chrome):
<http://i.imgur.com/Agk8l.png> (after a refresh it seems to be working
properly.. odd bug)

~~~
dalton
Just rolled out a fix for that bug, could you try it again?

We're doing it live here.

~~~
xelfer
I managed to upload all my screenshots, seems to be working, thank you! the
site looks great.

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stucksimon
So I just tried out the service and am debating whether to use it or not. I've
been looking for something like this, but dealing with the domain issue and
providing a bit of automation for icon/image grabbing would go a long way for
me. Also wondering if there are plans for multi-platform support? My company
has many apps that exist on both iPhone and Android.

~~~
dalton
The importer isn't quite ready for prime time.

We support iPhone and Android currently.

Feel free to email me at dalton -at- app dot net, would be happy to answer any
additional questions you have :)

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dalton
Hi this is Dalton, CEO of App.net

hn people might remember me from this:
<http://startupschool.org/schedule.html>

Feel free to ask me any questions you have. You can email me at dalton -at-
app dot net

~~~
lwat
That is one sexy domain name you got there!

~~~
dalton
Thanks, I spent an embarrassing amount of time domaining over the past couple
of years. At last it finally paid off :)

~~~
ez77
Why did such an ambitious project choose private registration? It makes it
look unnecessarily shady. Why not set Mixed Media Labs [1] as the Registrant?

[1] <https://manage.app.net/about/>

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Cyph0n
Very interesting idea, and an even more interesting domain name.

One thing though: how can a user download the app itself? Must he/she be on an
iPhone or are you just advertising the apps themselves and expecting the user
to visit the App Store to get them?

~~~
dalton
We are building tools to help app developers gain insight and drive
engagement. There are myriad issues around creating alternate app stores, so
we are very intentionally trying to build on top of existing atores.

In terms of how a user that hits one of the pages and actually get the app on
their phone, we have a couple of novel approaches (in addition to the standard
iTunes link): click "get the app" and you will see a place to SMS a link to
the phone, email a link, etc.

~~~
Cyph0n
I see. Well, I wish you and your team the best of luck.

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jjets718
It looks great. Can you use your own app domain name instead of using
app.net/yourappname?

~~~
dalton
Thanks :)

re:custom domains, not at this point, but that is definitely one of the most
common feature requests we have gotten so far.

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mtogo
Cool, flavors.me for phone apps. Their list of apps that use the service is
rather impressive, did those companies add themselves or did app.net create
profiles for all of them?

~~~
dalton
Those were beta testers that I showed the service to before we launched, and
explicitly gave us permission to feature them.

~~~
mtogo
Pretty impressive in that case! Great app idea.

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masonlee
This is a good idea for a business! Custom site design of that quality can
easily run someone a couple grand.

Feature request: room for iPad screenshots!

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jzting
Looks great. Is there any way for analytics ignore clicks from the creator?
Just got an inflated click count while testing out different templates.

~~~
dalton
Good point. That would probably be a way to filter out specific IP addresses,
right?

~~~
mst
Given the minisites are all under a single domain, wouldn't serving a cookie
to the author be sufficient?

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minikomi
Might be a good idea to add some control over the screenshot slideshow..
clicking the screen to go to next image would be fine

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teyc
Nice. and nice domain too.

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joelackner
this might sound lazy, but why don't you scrape the content (description,
icon, screens) when i add my app?

~~~
dalton
I don't think that's lazy, that's smart ;)

We actually wrote a lot of code to do exactly that, but it wasn't good enough
to make it into the launch. Would rather have less features that are rock
solid than a flaky importer.

