20 Million Recommendations Served, plus Q2 Top Apps
20 million
That's right - 20,000,000 served! Given the popularity of the Apptizr V2 release, our app became the top Productivity app in the App Store back in June. The surge of new users has resulted in a surge of app recommendations made. We're very excited about getting to 20 million recommendations so quickly, and we hope to continue this trajectory.
We haven't shared the top apps on Apptizr in a while, so we took a look at Q2 of this year (April through June). Some things are similar, while there are definitely some changes as well.
Taking a look at the top downloaded free apps in Q2, you'll notice lots of familiar names. One thing we've noticed over the last couple of quarters is the fact that some popular apps stand the test of time and have been constantly popular - Facebook, Pandora, Google, Google Earth, Shazam, Movies all fall in this category. There are always a couple of new comers to the list - this quarter the top of the chart was the new comer "Are you left brained or right brained?"
The Paid list was a bit surprising this quarter, since the Top 10 are all games. Games have always been popular on the App Store, but this was the first time it dominates every spot in the Top 10. Another interesting trend is that more of the apps are priced at $0.99, which is consistent with the general trend on the App Store.
For the full report, you can check out the following presentation posted on SlideShare. It also contains the Top 10 most liked apps that are free and paid. Please let us know if you have any other thoughts.
Apptizr V2 is the Number 1 App in Productivity!
1st place
Thanks to all of our users who downloaded Apptizr V2 and told their friends about it - we are now the number 1 free app in the Productivity category in the App Store! We are actually number 1 in 10 different countries (including US, UK, and Canada) and top 10 in more than 50 countries. Please continue to share the word on Apptizr so we can help more people discover great iPhone apps.
Apptizr V2 App – Bump iPhones to compare app lists with friends
We are very excited about the Apptizr app version 2.0, which features 6 different ways to discovery great apps and was just approved by Apple earlier this week. Our last post focused on the different methods for discovering apps using Apptizr 2.0.
Today I want to highlight a super cool new feature on Apptizr 2.0 - the ability to share your app lists with friends you see in person. Many of you already know about the Bump app, one of the most popular apps in the App Store. The folks who make Bump also offer an API which we were able to utilize to make this happen. If you are logged into your Apptizr account on the app and runs into a friend who has has Apptizr on his/ her iPhone, you can add each other as friends by simply bumping your iPhones (or iPod Touch or iPad) together. It's super cool!
Here's a short YouTube video which demo's this great feature.
Apptizr V2 Just Approved – 6 Ways to Discover Apps
We're very excited to announce that Apptizr version 2.0 just got approved by Apple. This upgrade contains some major improvements. Specifically, in additional to the recommendation engine, you can now discover apps through 5 other ways. V2.0 also features newly redesigned user interface with a home screen for you to easily navigate to all of the main functionality quickly.
These are the 6 ways to discover apps now on Apptizr:
1. Recommended: Apptizr uses our proprietary algorithm to bring you the best apps that match your tastes. Apptizr learns more about your preferences over time as you tell us whether you like, dislike, or already own various apps you see. Apptizr also evaluates the applications for quality and only recommends the best apps in each category to you.
2. Live Feed: See what the rest of the Apptizr community likes or owns. Discover apps you may not otherwise think you would be interested in. Add friends or follow top users and see what apps they like or own.
3. Browse Apps: Browse for top apps based on topic. Starting with the App Store categories, pick topic you are interested in to see matching apps. You can continue to browse for apps in related topics.
4. Hottest Apps: See what apps are moving up the App Store rankings the fastest. Learn about the hottest apps before they make it to the Top 25 list.
5. Top Apps: See what apps are the top ranked apps in the App Store. Filter by free or paid apps or by category.
6. On Sale: See what apps are on sale (reduced price or paid becoming free). Sort by recency, popularity, or discount amount.
In addition to the 6 ways to discover apps, Apptizr V2 also offers a bunch of other cool features:
* My Apps - keeps track of all of the apps you own and like
* My Tastes - tell Apptizr explicitly what categories and sub-categories of apps you like for our recommendation engine
* Friends - see what your friends like and own via Facebook integration or Bump if you see someone in person
* Similar Apps - found an app you like? see what apps are similar
* Sale Alerts - get notified when an app you like goes on sale
* App Sharing - easily share any app with a friend via email, Facebook, or Twitter
Here's a 5 minute on YouTube uf you want to see it in action. Alternatively, you can get it now from the App Store.
10 Million Recommendations Served, Some Insights for App Developers
Wow! That's a lot of zeros... We're pretty excited to announce that we have now served up more than 10,000,000 app recommendation on Apptizr. Here is our official press release about this. We want to thank all of our loyal users for using Apptizr to discover great iPhone apps.
Having served up all of those recommendations and seeing what apps our users like, dislike, or own/download has given us some great data to play with. We decided to look through this user data plus the data we have from the App Store to gain some insights. This should be particularly interesting to iPhone app developers or publishers.
What we found was that not all categories are equal. Some categories are more popular with developers/publishers, others are more popular with iPhone/ iPod Touch users. The most popular categories among developers based on the apps in the App Store are Books, Games, and Entertainment.
However, even though Books is now the most dominant category in the App Store, it is not particularly popular among Apptizr users. Kevin Tofel from GigaOm wrote a great post about this today. Even though Books represents 18% of apps in the App Store, it only accounts for 3% of the user downloads. Games on the other hand, constitutes 16% of apps in the App Store, but a leading 29% of downloads. Other categories with high downloads are Entertainment and Productivity apps.
As our existing users know, you can browse through apps by category or topic, as well as browse for Hottest Apps, Top Ranked apps, or apps On Sale on Apptizr. We are able to look at the popularity of categories browsed by our users as another indicator of which categories have the highest demand from iPhone users. Based on this criteria, Utilities, Games, Entertainment, and Productivity came out on top.
You can view and download the full report here. The report also contains data about the Top 10 apps downloaded and liked by Apptizr users in Q1 2010. I've also uploaded it to SlideShare for easier sharing. Please feel free to share this with iPhone app developers or anyone you think will find it interesting. As always, we would love to hear feedback on what you think of this data/ analysis.
Recommend an App via Facebook “Like” button
Facebook announced their "Like" button today at the F8 conference that will enable an open and social web. Mark Zuckerberg predicts there will be more than 1 billion "like" buttons by the end of the day today. To help our friends at Facebook achieve this goal - we've added these buttons to Apptizr on all of our app details pages (that's almost 200K pages) - in the form of "Recommend" buttons.
Join in on the fun and start sharing what apps you would recommend to your Facebook friends. You can get started by going through your "My Apps" list. Tell us what you think!
Top Liked and Downloaded Apps in March 2010
We haven't done it since February, so we thought we would take a look at the top apps on Apptizr once again. We looked at which apps were "Liked" the most by our users in the month of March, as well as which apps were downloaded the most by our users.
First, the most liked apps. This is the resulting top 10 list for free apps vs. paid apps. Starting with the free apps, Pandora & Shazam are both still in the Top 10. Similar to January, there were no Games in the Top 10, although My Town is basically a game.
Here's the top 10 list among paid apps which were most liked by Apptizr users in March. Productivity and Utilities apps are the most popular, which is similar to the January results as well.
Switching gears to what our users actually tried to download and install. We broke it down by Top 10 free and Top 10 paid apps this time. In the case of most downloaded apps, Games and Entertainment now dominate the list, taking 6 of the top 10 spots.
The Paid Top 10 most downloaded apps also contains lots of Games and Entertainment apps (5 of 10).
You can view and download the full PDF file here, where the app names are clickable in case you want to easily see these apps on Apptizr. Like last time, I've also posted this as a presentation on Slideshare. As always, thoughts or feedback on the post would be welcome. Please feel free to share these lists with folks who may find them interesting.
Download these apps in time for March Madness
It is March. It's time to set the clock forward and get ready for March Madness. Here are some apps you will need to keep you on top of all of the great games.
1. CBS Sports NCAA March Madness on Demand - Get coverage for ALL of the games live - video streamed straight to your iPhone. Don't miss a single game with this app. You can also get radio coverage streamed to you as well.
2. NCAA Highlights - Want the video coverage but don't want to pay? Get video highlights from the games delivered straight to your iPhone or iPod Touch.
3. Smackdaddy - Like to trash talk about the games/teams with your friends? Use Smackdaddy to talk smack with your buddies and you can also put your money where your mouth is with some virtual betting. You can use this app to see whether your picks for the NCAA will pay off.
4. ESPN Zoom: College Hoops - Want to check out lots of pictures from NCAA and also test out your eye sight? Play this free "spot the difference" game during the commercial breaks to keep your eyes sharp.
5. ESPN Tournament Challenge - Easily create brackets for March Madness and compete against your friends or the ESPN community.
See the Best Deals on the App Store with Apptizr’s New On Sale Page
Many users have requested this feature so we're glad to be rolling this out - you can now use Apptizr to find the best deals in the App Store with our new On Sale page. You can filter the list by category (default is all categories), and you can sort the list by app ratings (highest rated on top, which is the default), by discount % (to find the biggest bargains), and by recency (see which apps went on sale most recently).
We currently update this list daily and go back a full week so you can see all of the apps that went on sale in this past seven days. Hopefully you find this useful. As always, we appreciate whatever feedback you have for us.
The Sweepstakes Winners Are…
Thanks to everyone who participated in our iTunes Gift Card Sweepstakes. Lot of folks invited and followed their friends on Apptizr during this promotion. Many of our top users also captured many followers. We also received lots of feedback in our survey. Thanks so much everyone!
Now it's time to announce the winners of our sweepstakes. Drum roll please.... The grand prize winner of $100 in iTunes gift card goes to Ed Armstrong from St. Louis, MO. The winners of the $50 gift cards are:
Congratulations to all of our winners!