App downloads are (Kindle) Fire-d up! Whatever the final tally is, one thing is for sure: Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a legitimate platform and will be driving app downloads for the tablet based on a modified version of Android OS. Today, Read It Later (a service like TiVo for web content I recently profiled) came out and said iPhone and iPad, Android, Kindle Fire and Firefox extension. This holiday it was the Kindle Fire—12.5% of all devices registered on Christmas day and an impressive 17% of new users on the day after Christmas were from the new Amazon device. As you can see below, the Kindle Fire is still quite a bit smaller than our Android and iPhone/iPad audiences (it’s also the only platform with no free version yet). While some have claimed that Android users aren’t interested in paid or premium apps, 45% of Read It Later’s Pro users during the holidays came from Android, and 19% came from the Kindle Fire. Those are some substantial gains for a new tablet that came to market just a few months ago.
Airbnb Cofounder Was One Of The Worst Spammers In The World, Says His Freshman Roommate. Airbnb Nathan Blecharczyk, the cofounder and CTO of a billion dollar startup called AirBnB was, at one point, one of the top spammers in the world, according to his freshman year roommate, Aaron Greenspan. We learned about Greenspan's blog post on the topic after reading Ryan Tate's excellent post on Gawker. Greenspan says Blecharczyk ran a spam operation out of his Harvard dorm called Data Miners, sending out millions of messages each week.
These days, Blecharczyk helps run Airbnb, a room-sharing startup that is now worth around $1 billion. He may not have left all his spammy ways behind him. Competitors have said Airbnb farms online classified sites like Craigslist and sends out spam messages to renters. "When I initially read about Airbnb's spam scandal, I could and could not believe it," Greenspan wrote. Here are some of the best bits from Greenspan's post: Airbnb also ran into some trouble when one Airbnb customer ransacked a house and stole information about the renter's identity. Xyologic Releases Hundreds Of Reports Detailing Worldwide Mobile App Trends. App search company Xyologic is today releasing a total of 220 app download reports, featuring detailed data on Android, iOS and Windows Phone trends across 29 countries worldwide.
The reports track statistics like the number of downloads per platform/per country, growth rates, country rankings, number of paid vs. free apps published, app revenue and details regarding app publishers’ individual rankings. Unlike app store rankings, Xyologic’s reports use raw download numbers to rank apps, as opposed to complex algorithms often meant to boost app discoverability. Ranking by downloads per month also means that some of the most popular apps will be lower on the list because the majority of their install base already has the app on their phones.
That’s why Facebook clocks in as the #18 free app on iPhone in the U.S., for example, while game maker Zynga comes in at #15. If you work in the mobile industry, this treasure trove of reports is definitely worth a look. Bringing Social App Discovery to Mobile. Today, we are extending Facebook Platform on mobile, bringing all the social channels that have helped apps and games reach hundreds of millions of users on the Web to mobile apps and websites. You can now easily reach the 350 million people who use Facebook every month on a mobile device, including iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and our mobile web site. We are at the beginning of bringing Facebook Platform apps to mobile. The features we are launching today are still under development. They will evolve as we learn more about building richer social experiences on mobile devices. Social Channels on Mobile Social channels like Bookmarks, Requests, and News Feed drive the discovery and distribution of apps using Facebook Platform.
Bookmarks Bookmarks are one of the key re-engagement channels for Apps on Facebook. Now, people who use Facebook on the iPhone, the iPad, and the mobile web site (m.facebook.com), will get bookmarks to the mobile versions of these apps. Requests News Feed Facebook Credits. Mobile.
Notes on the new Facebook app, and what this means for discovery. Facebook released a new version of their app. Unlike what is said this is not an iPad app, but a universal version which runs both on iPhone and iPad. The app got massive traction instantly. Yesterday we tweeted at launch it would reach #1 Free app in less than 6h. It actually reached the #2 spot in less than that. Facebook is also reportedly crashing a lot for now, we can read on reports, but this is likely to be fixed today in an update [try to uninstall and reinstall the app, this fixes the problem]. Overall this is an awesome app. What is most remarkable is how Facebook is going to impact on what we call “app discovery”.
We recently published an answer on Quora about that matter and we reproduce here the content. This is going to be great for generating adoption and recurring usage the 2 bricks of discovery (which is often limited to the notion of “getting noticed”). Facebook Makes Its Move: Brings Viral Channels to HTML5, iOS Apps. Facebook finally unveiled its long-awaited effort to help mobile developers market their native and HTML5-based apps through its platform today. iOS developers will get to take advantage of bookmarks, requests and the news feed in the same way that Facebook canvas developers do. The interesting parts of today’s launch are: Facebook is playing nice with Apple on viral distribution for native iOS apps, not just HTML5-based ones: If a developer wants to distribute a native application, Facebook’s notifications will send prospective users to the iTunes app store.
So Facebook is not pressuring developers to build HTML5 apps in order to use its viral channels. This is a big deal because the HTML5-requirement was perceived as a hurdle for adoption of Facebook’s mobile platform. It’s unclear if Facebook will get affiliate revenue for the downloads it drives of paid apps. Parallel viral channels on Android will be coming soon. And here are the key viral channels for mobile developers: