But the question is, what did he do in December that jump started his downloads? Or, if he didn't do anything, what happened that started the rise in downloads/reviews?
Flappy Bird by the Numbers
71–80 of 149 posts
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discovery in general is still a pretty knotty problem. Even Netflix, which has a relatively small pool of things to sort through, doesn't do a particularly good job of it. It often recommends things I have no interest in whatsoever, and conversely never recommends things I very much want to watch but have to find manually. It's practical to manually sort as a Netflix customer precisely because their pool is relativel…
> Even Netflix ... doesn't do a particularly good job of [discovery]. I see this message repeated by a lot of tech people, but I feel like I get fairly good recommendations. Am I alone? What is it about the recommendations that seem bad? Is it because you know there is better content there but the metadata has somehow not categorized it properly for cross-referencing, or does it seem more like it's guessing from a sh…
I briefly used Netflix several years ago, and was astonished at how good the recommendations were. However, I aggressively rated many movies in their catalogue to get better recommendations, movies I'd seen before not necessarily just movies I'd watched on Netflix. When I talked to others who had it, and didn't like their recommendations, it seemed to be because they weren't rating the movies at all.
Maybe they couldn't be bothered, maybe they assumed it would know based on what they watched, or maybe because these were couples I often talked to it was awkward to bring up rating the movie when there were potentially two different opinions on it, and one or both parties unwilling to debate the issue...
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our culture is so completely and utterly obsessed with money that everyone says he's an idiot for taking down an app without realizing the chaos one goes through in a situation like that. It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. I mean, it isn't that hard to ignore all the bad comments and emails, and a small price to pay for riches. There must be something else going on, and that is the bit th…
It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. The actions and statements of the author seem completely at odds, and he literally could not do more self-promotion if he tried. Seriously, beyond assassinating a world leader dressed as flappy bird, I cannot fathom how he could have cemented more attention. He had a hit game. These come and go, usually with the creators completely shrouded and hidden. But…
Precisely. If he didn't want the negative feedback, or he is "shy", why did he throw himself out in front of everyone? If you're shy, you don't do interviews, and you definitely don't boast. Things don't add up here.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The possible subtext is that he is shutting it down in fear of bad repercussion - like being exposed for gaming the app store rankings - or to simply avoid such accusations.
That's my guess. For all, for the sake of argument, let's say this developer did hire somebody to pump up his numbers. They could even be extorting him to pay them more in exchange for their silence. It reminds me of the movie 'Office Space' ... where they rig their software to shave fractional-pennies off of each transaction for an eventual payday, only to have their plan work too well too quickly.
Then shutting down does not solve the problem. They could still go ahead and reveal.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. The actions and statements of the author seem completely at odds, and he literally could not do more self-promotion if he tried. Seriously, beyond assassinating a world leader dressed as flappy bird, I cannot fathom how he could have cemented more attention. He had a hit game. These come and go, usually with the creators completely shrouded and hidden. But…
Precisely. If he didn't want the negative feedback, or he is "shy", why did he throw himself out in front of everyone? If you're shy, you don't do interviews, and you definitely don't boast. Things don't add up here.
The only charitable interpretation I can imagine is that he's both shy, and also a doormat. As in, he didn't want to do interviews, but he didn't know how to say no when asked for them. This sort of person also feels intense pressure to answer every fan-letter in their inbox, etc. I can see, if this is the case, why he would want to quit out of the situation.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#76I think people are unwilling to accept luck as an explanation. This might especially be true for the HN audience, because so many of us work so hard hoping to have a success like this.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#77In the linked article, the writer claims that by using AdMob, he left $1M on the table... I'm curious - where does this claim come from? The fact that he could have sold the app? Or is there a different untapped revenue stream?
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#78Im convinced more people talk about this game than actually play it.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#79I think the story of this game exemplifies the fact that content needs a minimum amount of attention to reveal it's true value. The journey of Flappy Bird appears to me like this: Stage 1: Almost no attention, almost no growth Stage 2: Some kind of grey market paid downloads / ratings service Stage 3: Attention of minimum critical mass of early consumers (increase in audience of 1 or perhaps 2 orders of magnitude) St…
You should add the simpler, deeper issue of upvoting mechanically filtering out good long form content. Say I found a link here and it's a really good long form story, I really got into it, even had a coffee break while reading it. Then I want to vote for it, but the link has fallen down and is hard to find back. It is even worse on Google, Facebook or Twitter, because of the infinite scrolling. I always open seeming…
One simple change would be to replace time-based "gravity" dragging items down as they age. Instead, gravity could be based on the number of users who have "finished" consuming the content. Perhaps by just clicking "Back" to the aggregator, or by explicitly acknowledging the completion. There could be three buttons: Like, Dislike, and Saw But Don't Care. In the algorithm to drive items downward, time would be replaced by the count of all three actions. Long-form content would then not be penalized so much (but would still be disadvantaged by users who dislike or don't care about long-form content, of course).
A New page might also need to be sorted differently, e.g. by putting items with zero count at the top, and ignoring time as with the front page.
Re: Flappy Bird by the Numbers
#80What disturbs me most about this is the complete lack of empathy people have for the guy. Just look at the comments on the link explaining that Flappy Bird was removed from the app store. Our culture is so completely and utterly obsessed with money that everyone says he's an idiot for taking down an app without realizing the chaos one goes through in a situation like that. They hurl insults like "weak" and "fragile"…
Your post was brilliant but you ruined it with this..
>>only to be puzzled when having a large number in their bank account fails to actually solve any of their problems.
I'm not sure what kind of utterly broken philosophy propagates this idea. Do people actually believe that some one starving, unable to afford any kind of medical care, who doesn't have a proper home, clothes or anything for that matter is far more happy than a millionaire?
What kind of a brainwashing does it take to help such absurd thoughts totally devoid of common sense to sink in?
Not one single person who is rich I know isn't happy. When rich people talk of money being unable to solve 'some problems' they are talking of stuff which I wouldn't even consider as problems. They are more like minor small time inconveniences.