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Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

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Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#31

Post by TwoKows »

I develop apps for friends and family, and offer them on the app store for the curious. I have used Pinterest in the past to post screenshots, and a few customers have mentioned they saw it on Pinterest.

Despite the phenomenal FUD, no one ever says they can't find an app they want. They try out the top 5 and pick one. Or make their own if they are industrious.

Huge numbers of shovelware apps aren't really a problem, but realize its time to focus on marketing that mediocre app if you want it to sell better.

The market is dictating the success of all those mediocre app developers properly: relegation to 2nd class and app obscurity.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#32

Post by goblin89 »

Tangential, but: for a while I was wondering what the idea and use cases of Pinterest are like, and this article seems to offer a decent explanation. (I know I’m not alone in this as the question seems to regularly pop up among HN comments in related threads, so I thought it might be worth a note.)

> Pinterest’s philosophy is that it can help nudge people into doing things — be it buying a coffee maker or trying a new recipe — by letting the site’s 70 million estimated regular visitors search for and save for later the things that interest them. If I’m looking to buy a good espresso machine, for instance, I could head over to La Marzocco’s website and pin a link to the $7,000 GS/3 to my Pinterest board to buy it later.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#33

Post by smackfu »

goblin89 wrote: post #32

Tangential, but: for a while I was wondering what the idea and use cases of Pinterest are like, and this article seems to offer a decent explanation. (I know I’m not alone in this as the question seems to regularly pop up among HN comments in related threads, so I thought it might be worth a note.) > Pinterest’s philosophy is that it can help nudge people into doing things — be it buying a coffee maker or trying a ne…

People planning weddings or home decoration used to have scrapbooks where they pasted in cutouts from magazines showing ideas they liked.

Pinterest is the online version of that.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#34

Post by fpgeek »

coob wrote: post #28
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on its usefulness. On a couple of recent occasions I've read about an interesting Android app while at work, logged into my Google account, gone to the Play Store web interface and told it to install the apps on my tablet at home. When I got home the apps were already installed and there were notifications reminding me to try them. I'm surprised that the App Store doesn't have a similar feature.

It does, you just have to do it from iTunes.

If you have to use iTunes, that doesn't sound similar at all. There's a huge gap between virtually any browser you're willing to log into and a computer that you can run iTunes on.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#35

Post by mynegation »

It probably will solve the app discovery problem for some users, but not for me, for the simple reason that I do not have it. I am an app junkie and over the years installed close to 500 of them, keep 200 of them on the phone, and regularly use maybe 50 of them, 10 most useful ones almost every day.

Between app store search, google searches for specific features or integrations, apps that come with devices like activity trackers, reviews in blogs, and occasional promo actions in Starbucks, I think I have it covered.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#36

Post by tempodox »

The AppStore needs improvement desperately, but the idea that pinterest could help here is a joke almost as bad as the AppStore itself. Even if pinterest didn't suck like hell in its own right, using it would still break integration. Who would buy iOS apps from pinterest?

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#38

Post by smackfu »

TwoKows wrote: post #31

I develop apps for friends and family, and offer them on the app store for the curious. I have used Pinterest in the past to post screenshots, and a few customers have mentioned they saw it on Pinterest. Despite the phenomenal FUD, no one ever says they can't find an app they want. They try out the top 5 and pick one. Or make their own if they are industrious. Huge numbers of shovelware apps aren't really a problem,…

FUD? So you search for "twitter" and try the top five apps.

#1 is Twitter's official app. So they get a point for that.

#2 is Instagram. Close but no cigar.

#3 is TwiGrow which looks like some kind of scheme to get more followers.

#4 is Pic Jointer, an app to join photos together.

#5 is Happy Park, a theme park game.

It doesn't get any better after that. Waze, Flipboard, emoji keyboards. I don't know how far you have to get down the list to actually find another twitter client.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#39

Post by c1sc0 »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #25
wozniacki wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should say that ! I came across these images less than a day ago. Here is an image of what looks like a worker in China manipulating App store rankings using an array of some hundred 5Cs. http://i.imgur.com/EWyVh0X.jpg And here is an image purportedly showing the prices for a Top 10 spot in Apple's App Store, achieved through ranking manipulation. http://i.imgur.com/TZuf1iP.jpg [1] This disturbing image of…

They probably only affect the Chinese App Store. The stores are separate, and the Chinese one is censored.

I very much doubt those iOS devices are hooked up to Chinese credit cards. In fact, I bet that they are set up to cycle through a series of credit cards.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#40

Post by furyofantares »

smackfu wrote: post #33
goblin89 wrote: post #32

Tangential, but: for a while I was wondering what the idea and use cases of Pinterest are like, and this article seems to offer a decent explanation. (I know I’m not alone in this as the question seems to regularly pop up among HN comments in related threads, so I thought it might be worth a note.) > Pinterest’s philosophy is that it can help nudge people into doing things — be it buying a coffee maker or trying a ne…

People planning weddings or home decoration used to have scrapbooks where they pasted in cutouts from magazines showing ideas they liked. Pinterest is the online version of that.

People still have scrapbooks, and for lots of reasons more than that, including simply as a hobby.

It's also very similar to vision boards (actually, I think the similarity is stronger, and may be where the "pin" metaphor comes from).

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