SimonDawlat

On the push notifications side, Batch (disclaimer: I'm a founder), is very solid:

https://batch.com/features

I can't fucking believe it. How does something like that happen?

for some reason the Gates/Zuck drop out references always forget to mention what school they actually dropped out from

I think I've lost you there, thanks for your thoughtful comments though.

I have to disagree with you on this one. This was discussed with the PH team beforehand. We wanted to know exactly what was cool to do, and what wasn't. And we followed their rules very closely.

See: https://twitter.com/ProductHunt/status/542336884861845504

So you're not just a "sarcastic tech blog commentator", but also a harsh blog post commentator :) But you're right. Removed it. Thx for reading til the end.

Easy, just go to an app page. Say, Inside for example:

iOS – https://batch.com/insights/app/ios/inside-com-breaking-news

Android – https://batch.com/insights/app/android/inside-com

Answer below on what is does. We address some specific demographics so it's not necessarily something useful for you if you're not in mobile dev/product/marketing.

"Are you running a bunch of Android and iOS devices, installing apps, subscribing to push notifications in them and then gathering data that way?"

That's the basic idea except that we use virtual machines mostly, combined with some hardware components.

What's your category exactly? Happy to look into it for you.

That we can certainly add very quickly – thx for the great suggestion.

Nop :)

I'm sure they do – what we're trying to do is have a more holistic approach by looking at all apps!

Much appreciated. We've also made our top banner wording more explicit. Thx.

Good question!

There is a lot of work to be done to improve the quality, uniqueness, and usefulness of mobile notifications. Before Batch Insights, there was no way to get a comprehensive view of the notifications sent by gaming/m-commerce co's or news outlets. Now, as a marketer, product manager, or developer you can use Batch Insights to become inspired and develop a more effective and differentiated strategy.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the industry's use of mobile notifications, such as:

1. In the media industry, were you first to broadcast the news on Ferguson. See > https://batch.com/insights/all?language=en&search=ferguson%2...

2. How is your competition using notifications? Track a specific vertical such as games and monitor them in real-time or follow custom groupings of the apps that matter to you. See > https://batch.com/insights/all?category=games&language=en

3. In gaming, some use incentivized notifications to reengage, others try to make you feel sorry. What's your strategy?

4. How unique is your message from day to day? Which days are most popular for certain messages? You can view statistics on the content of your notifications, as well as others'. See > https://batch.com/insights/app/ios/inside-com-breaking-news

Being mobile developers ourselves we've been dying to know. Batch Insights tries to answer these questions.

I believe that's a mistake: we link to a special page (https://batch.com/insights/hn) made specifically for HN readers that lets anyone sign-up instantly and access 100% of the features we've built as of today.

EDIT: looks like it's our special page wording that caused the confusion – we're updating it right now.

We're working on getting destination link/deeplink + open rate + conversion rate next. But before that we have a lot of advanced analytics features to build on top of the content itself. Product roadmap is quite packed!

First off, for studying apps behaviors over the past months we've observed some pretty interesting content strategies: marketers and content producers are hard at work on making notifications are more polished experience. Then, platforms are pushing notifications forward, they know it creates addictions for both developers and users so they're likely to invest more there in the future. It's becoming the interface for users. For developers, it's growth + engagement. Eventually, notifications formats themselves are evolving: richer, with images, with more characters, with more elaborate call to actions, etc. I'll think we'll see some interesting innovations in this space in the next 18/24 months.

I'm still totally with you on Cyanogenmod with no pn. As someone wrote earlier today on the Internet: 'I miss the good old days of being AFK'.

Hello HN. Founder here. Happy to answer any questions.

In a nutshell: I was inspired to build this service after the AppGratis/Apple disagreement back in 2013 where most of the controversy revolved around our supposed "abuse of push notifications" (Guideline 5.6, in Apple's book).

What happened next made me realize how important notifications were going to be: it's the next interface for users, while developers rely on them entirely for growth and engagement. But until today there was no analytics service dedicated to this new medium, which is what we're trying to build with Batch Insights.

Hope you'll like it.

Hi HN. Founder here. Happy to answer any questions :)

I think this piece you're putting here shows quite well how much the definition of a round doesn't matter to anyone but VCs. Important stuff is: awesome product!

As a french entrepreneur who has hosted dozens of US friends in Paris, some of them being prominent members of the "hacker" community as we call it, I have always been struck with amazement at how little "hacking" these friends would apply to their Paris trip, easily falling for the Tour Eiffel visit, desperately wanting to see the Moulin Rouge (which is probably the worst place to visit in all Paris – and probably in all Europe), still marveling at the shitty 50m2 studio in Montmartre or Ile Saint Louis they were about to rent before I offered to host them and show them my version of the city, etc. How can it be 2014 and people still want to experience Paris by showing up on a Saturday morning at Notre Dame only to stand in line for hours amidst hundreds of Japanese people and their cameras the size of a small Segway.

I am not saying it is easy to "hack" a city you've never visited before, and for the 2 years I spent myself in San Francisco I still believe I coud have hacked my way around much better. But if I were to provide a few advices to anyone about to embark on a Paris trip, that would be:

– Buy the Paris edition of the Lonely Planet and decide to not go to all the places they mention.

– Don't come in August (most of the city is basically shut down during the holidays). May, June, July, September, October, November.

– Most of the most interesting buildings (+ the overall Haussmannian architecture of Paris) are better seen from the outside: better spend 30 great minutes on le Parvis du Trocadéro watching the Eiffel Tower, than actually waiting 3h in line to get "inside" the Eiffel Tower.

– Get in line at museums roughly 1:30 hour before they're about to close: shorter lines, people on their way out. You have less time but it's clearly optimized.

– When in doubt, rely on locals: I know many Americans actually living and enjoying their life in Paris. You're always a few friends away on Facebook from knowing someone who lives here.

– Somewhere in their inboxes Parisian people have crafted for friends and/or received from friends "lists" of insider places to go that they'll happily forward to you once you've made connexion (I made a very long and detailed one of my favorite restaurants once).

– Use local guides. If you're a foodie, following the Lefooding.com recommendations for example is always a guarantee to both eat at wonderful places and visit fun areas where these restaurants are located in. For all the things we suck at if there's one thing the Paris scene is amazingly good at is food & restaurant innovation.

– If you're part of the tech community: damn it, you just need to hit your local counterparts. At the opposite of gross taxi drivers, young french tech people are very welcoming and easy to get in touch with.

– You can definitely hit me up anytime even if we don't know each other, I'm always happy to help.

I'm probably omitting a ton here but there's an apéro down my street with friends waiting for me to show up :)

What took you so long Susan!

The video is amazing.