wacheena

I dig this overall process (and transparency), but I'm bummed that ultimately it came down to "I have an idea." It's an idea that has some customer validation, but the value of this series of blog posts for folks was to prove a process for creating a web application that didn't start with "an idea."

Android link correction. This is the paid ($0.99) version: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tenromans.birthday...

Orket = Orkut, further proof that there wasn't pressure to use it!

I worked at Google for a number of years during which time lots of products were coming out or ramping up. For instance, at the time Orket was Google's social strategy du jour.

There was minimal (if any) pressure to use Orket over the burgeoning Facebook or aging MySpace at the time. When we ran internal experiments often we would use Google properties like Orket and/or other dog food. But it wasn't required.

I believe this time around (G+) there was more employee encouragement. Probably both in internal PR and (if rumors are true) financially.

But either way, folks that work at Google are proud of working there. It's not unlike rooting for your college team. And as a result they're likely to use Google products without extra incentive.

Android, unfortunately does not have this functionality. All permissions have to be requested up front, whether or not they are needed for all users.

No

Yes

Noah's pretty active on HN (at least reading), so I expect he'll chime in soon.

Good question on this one. I'm not sure.

My understanding was that Amazon was concerned more with equitable pricing across app stores. i.e., you can't sell the app for $0.99 with Google and $1.99 with Amazon.

But in truth I haven't gone through the TOS with a fine tooth comb. Do you have a reference to that section?

Actually, I've had some back and forth with Amazon over the past few hours. Their current policy is "the developer shouldn't been penalized for issues outside of their core binary."

In my case Amazon is going to approve the app without modification while they work out the kinks in the approval process.

Some argue that the deviceid is a security risk and Greystripe shouldn't be using it to track impressions.

But advertisers should be able to send their customers to whatever app store they choose. Especially since they're not beholden to Amazon's T&Cs.

I doubt that Amazon wants to eliminate Greystripe/Admob/Millennial, etc. from their app store, so my guess is they just need a better way to vet urls that end up in non-Amazon app stores.

I've been using FB auth only for a year or so on one of my Android apps. It's centered specifically around social sharing and I'm focusing on US based users at first.

Given the maintenance tradeoffs around other login methods, I'm pretty happy with my choice. I'm sure that I lose groups of users that are only on Twitter, or Orkut or choose your SN du jour, but in the spirit of keeping things lean I'm happy with my choice.

One can always add other auth methods when growth looks like a hockey stick. 500MM+ FB users should be enough to get started.

Great work. Can you expand on the FB oauth_id comment, how are you storing the ids now?

Yes. UI is one thing, but many devs out there are using these patterns and everyone reinvents the wheel to implement them.

For most Internet/technology savvy folks this won't be appealing.

A few years back I realized that most of my technology purchases were actually "rentals." I purchase them at full price, use them for a year or two and then unload them on eBay or Amazon marketplace. This goes for cameras, cellphones, laptops, etc.

The rental price is basically the delta between what I purchase it for and what I sell it for. I've found that savvy decisions about when to sell a piece of technology can minimize the depreciation.

A popular example is selling an old iPhone in May in anticipation of the latest and greatest coming out in June. By selling in May I minimize depreciation.

The mistake I see many of my friends make is holding onto a piece of technology for too long under the false belief that they'll "find a use for it someday." Over the long haul the monetary value falls to zero (or near zero in the case of an old 2nd gen iPod shuffle I discovered yesterday) as does its usefulness.

In general I agree, AdWords (and indeed other Google products) could improve its customer service.

But I also know, having worked for several years at Google, that the volume of requests is enormous. Many of them come from advertisers less honest than you, and dealing with them takes time.

In my experience modern ad systems use, among other things, CPC x CTR. Using CPR x CTR is good for all stakeholders: 1. Advertiser value - the better/well targeted the ad, the lower the cost 2. Publisher value - higher CTR means more clicks, means more $$$. 3. And most importantly, user value - higher CTR is generally a good indicator of better targeted ads

I used to work in the domain business for Google.

Professional parkers value a domain based on its current traffic and ad ctr.

"Premium" domains - whole word .com domains generally have the highest value because 1) users sometimes type them into the address bar, 2) they have a better chance of ending up in organic search results and 3) there is usually clear ad targeting for users who visit the site (leading to a higher ad ctr).

If the domain is exclusively parked, one way to get a very rough estimate of the traffic is to use a keyword search tool. Look at the search volume for keywords in the domain and use that as a measure of how valuable it is.

Really excellent article. A launch is way more than just pushing a site from dev to production.

I worked in the domain parking industry for a few years. There's no doubt that Divank has many a ton of $$$ and is an impressive entrepreneur. But he does so at the expense of users on the Internet.

Directi/Skenzo is one of the most aggressive domain park companies on the Internet today. They make tens of millions using AdSense to monetize parked domains. Their templates (like those of Oversee) attempt to confuse users into errantly clicking on advertiser links, etc. leading to fewer available domains for start up purposes, poor advertiser returns and an arms race between search engines and parkers.

Wow. This would be _really_ helpful!

I have an Android app that I've been working on. The primary purpose is to let users see the apps their friends have so they can discover new ones.

You can see screen grabs @ http://www.appadvocate.com/screenshots2/

But the one that I really need help on is the home screen: http://bit.ly/ackPgK

The most important things for a user to look at are Friends (shows a list of friends and how many apps they have) and Friend's apps (shows a list of apps the user doesn't have but are being used by friends).

And I'd also like to figure out a way to encourage people to invite new friends to join them.