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A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

venturebeat.com

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Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#11

Post by matthew-wegner »

pmorici wrote: post #7
xelfer wrote: post #3

I'm wondering how accurate this article is. I'm an iPhone developer, and the iTunes connect website where you monitor your download statistics has been down since the 24th for a 4 day scheduled outage. It's still down now: http://itunesconnect.apple.com/ . I can't see any possible way they could know how many downloads they've had.

If the app contacts their web servers after it gets installed or in the course of use.

We do this with our iPhone games, like Raptor Copter (hunt velicoraptors in your Chinook helicopter!). It's part of our achievements/leaderboards framework, so we kept it in, but it also lets us compare the total number of sales to total iPhone device ids in our database. Piracy isn't a big problem, and we generally don't care anyway, but the data is available.

We had the scrolling LED sign in our office rattle off sales in real-time, which was fun for awhile.

As a quick piracy note, you can also detect pirated iPhone apps this way: http://thwart-ipa-cracks.blogspot.com/2008/11/detection.html

Back to iFart--I can't imagine many people would pirate a farting $0.99 app, versus a more expensive, more popular game. Maybe 1% or less?

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#12

Post by xelfer »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #11
pmorici wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the app contacts their web servers after it gets installed or in the course of use.

We do this with our iPhone games, like Raptor Copter (hunt velicoraptors in your Chinook helicopter!). It's part of our achievements/leaderboards framework, so we kept it in, but it also lets us compare the total number of sales to total iPhone device ids in our database. Piracy isn't a big problem, and we generally don't care anyway, but the data is available. We had the scrolling LED sign in our office rattle off s…

That's quite useful, thanks!

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#14

Post by redorb »

timr wrote: post #9
cperciva wrote: post #6

I'm now starting to understand why the YC motto is "make something people want", rather than "make something useful".

The people who want this will want it for about 15 minutes, then they'll want something else. It's a fad.

so someone is going to focus on building that next thing people will want; and however stupid it will be it will probably profit.

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#15

Post by kirubakaran »

cperciva wrote: post #6

I'm now starting to understand why the YC motto is "make something people want", rather than "make something useful".

From pg's essay: (opened my eyes to this)

"Wealth is what people want. I don't mean that as some kind of philosophical statement; I mean it as a tautology.

So an idea for a startup is an idea for something people want. Wouldn't any good idea be something people want? Unfortunately not. I think new theorems are a fine thing to create, but there is no great demand for them. Whereas there appears to be great demand for celebrity gossip magazines. Wealth is defined democratically. Good ideas and valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes."

http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#17

Post by kirubakaran »

vaksel wrote: post #2

everyone should watch the movie idiocracy....that's where we are heading at breakneck speeds

Steve Jobs:

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#18

Post by sqs »

xelfer wrote: post #3

I'm wondering how accurate this article is. I'm an iPhone developer, and the iTunes connect website where you monitor your download statistics has been down since the 24th for a 4 day scheduled outage. It's still down now: http://itunesconnect.apple.com/ . I can't see any possible way they could know how many downloads they've had.

https://itts.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Piano.woa has worked even while iTunes Connect has been down

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#19

Post by anamax »

timr wrote: post #9
cperciva wrote: post #6

I'm now starting to understand why the YC motto is "make something people want", rather than "make something useful".

The people who want this will want it for about 15 minutes, then they'll want something else. It's a fad.

The Chia Pet is still selling. The Pet Rock isn't.

Re: A Christmas iFart explosion: Nearly 40,000 downloads and $30,000 net

#20

Post by ReverendBayes »

cperciva wrote: post #6

I'm now starting to understand why the YC motto is "make something people want", rather than "make something useful".

At some point, a man, regardless of his convictions, has to stop getting into arguments with reality.

Bread and circuses it is, then.

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