Watch Out Amazon: GetJa...

Today, third-party mobile application store GetJar is publicly launching its GetJar Gold service, which has been in beta testing for the past month. The new service presents a viable challenge to Amazon’s Appstore and its time-limited “free app of the day” by offering an entire catalog of premium Android applications for free. The apps are high quality, ad-free and are available for download at any time. At launch, GetJar Gold will feature 50 titles, including Fruit Ninja THD, Age of Zombies, TuneIn Radio Pro, Solo, and Splashtop Remote Desktop. Their combined value is around $60.00. GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs says that new apps will be added daily. In fact, the company has nearly closed a deal with another big “recognizable” name in the mobile app industry, but cannot disclose details at this time. (Please be Angry Birds!) Only premium (paid) applications without in-app ads are considered for the new store, which operates under a different model than the retail app stores from Apple, Google and Amazon. Elsewhere, developers share a percentage of their premium app’s sales with app store provider, usually in a 70/30 (developer/app store) split. With GetJar, however, the company pays the developers for the applications on a per install basis, which ensures developers get paid. GetJar, in turn, generates revenue by offering sponsored listings within GetJar Gold to other application developers. Using a model similar to Google AdSense, developers bid on how much they are willing to pay per install. The bids can be as low as 1 cent or as high as $1.50 to $2.00 per user. The higher the bid, the higher the ranking in the GetJar Gold search results. Also like Google, sponsored apps are clearly labeled and highlighted using a different color (blue). Says Laurs, this model works because mobile users tend to download more than one application per session. Consumers also happy to try out the sponsored apps when relevant to their interests. But most importantly, this model works because when apps are free, users are more likely to download them – 10 to 20 time more likely, GetJar finds. GetJar Gold is now available on the GetJar.com website, mobile site and in its standalone Android application here . Crunchbase GETJAR Company: GETJAR Website: Learn more

AppGrooves: App Recomme...

The more mobile apps come out, the bigger the discovery problem gets for users: Apple, for example, recently announced they have 425,000 apps in the App Store. Rankings, recommendations from platform providers or search often bring unsatisfying results – a pain that an app called AppGrooves [version 2.0, free on iTunes ] now tries to solve. There are quite a few recommendation engines out there already (i.e. Chomp or Frenzapp ), but AppGrooves goes in a different direction: the idea is to combine a proprietary recommendation algorithm with a “Hot or not”-feature and a social element to discover unknown cool iOS apps. The way it works is that AppGrooves first detects what kind of apps you have installed on your device. In order to find new ones that fit your taste, AppGrooves then lets you choose between various pairs of apps it pulls from the list of apps you have on your device in “Hot Or Not” style (i.e. “Which do you like better: Pandora or Spotify?”). What’s interesting is that AppGrooves allows you to let your Facebook friends vote on apps as well: after voting on a pair of apps, you can not only share your decision but ask your Facebook friends which app they would have chosen for in that specific case, too. AppGrooves also collects votes from all your friends using the app and accumulates these social votes in order to produce more personalized recommendations over time (you can access this social hit list from within AppGrooves anytime). And if social isn’t your thing, you can also use the app’s search function to find apps with similar descriptions, from similar users etc. AppGrooves is one of the companies of the 500 Startups summer 2011 accelerator program . Its co-founder (and Japanese national) Dr. Naoki Shibata has stepped down from positions at Tokyo University, Stanford University and Japan’s biggest e-commerce company Rakuten to relocate to Silicon Valley. Shibata’s goal was to make his company global from day one, and his plan is apparently working: AppGrooves has just closed $360,000 in an angel round from some big names in the US and Japan, including 500 Startups, Richard Chen (founding partner of AngelPad), Mochio Umeda (president of MUSE Associates ), Takao Ozawa and Gen Miyazawa (two Japan-based angel investors).

Apple Announces Volume ...

Not a huge deal for the average user, but Apple has just announced volume sales support for organizations who want to pick up a few dozen copies of a certain iOS app. The new system is fairly simple: you select the app you want, select the number of seats, and pay with a credit card. It’s not clear if you can get bulk discounts yet but Apple then gives you a license for each device. You can now also create and sell custom B2B apps for iOS devices. Custom B2B apps are built just for you by third-party developers and business partners to address a specific business process, integrate with a unique back-office environment, or deliver a custom interface for your users. Using the Volume Purchase Program, you can securely and privately purchase custom B2B apps for iPhone and iPad that make your business even more effective. Previously, volume purchasing was only available for educational institutions. According to Apple, “The Volume Purchase Program for Business is coming soon to businesses in the United States.” This is actually quite interesting, if you think about it: volume pricing suggests volume deployment of iOS in the enterprise. While I’m sure no one is going to pick up 500 copies of Angry Birds , I wouldn’t be surprised if something like Pages becomes the de-rigeur mobile app in some circles for document editing on the go. via MacRumors

Discovr Launches Awesom...

At WWDC 2011 , Apple announced that there are now more than 400K apps in its app store (and that more than 500K have been approved). The Android Marketplace has around 300K apps and is growing fast. The point is: There are a lot apps out there already, and more hit app stores every day. They’re going like hotcakes. But finding and discovering new apps that you actually care about? Eh, not so easy. Of course, it’s not for lack of trying. There are some awesome tools out there already trying to direct the fire hose and filter the noise. Chomp , for example, is trying to become the Google search for apps. Zwapp , Frenzapp , and Appsfire are all bringing social to app discovery, while Heyzap is busy trying to kill game discovery. Today, Discovr adds a dy-no-mite app discovery tool to the crowd, going after the user experience problem in an awesome, though somewhat mathematical way: Interactive graphs. Back in January, Discovr launched a cool new app for the iPad that displayed an interactive map of the music world that displays, among other things, connections between bands and artists. It also allows the user, with a few quick taps, to view musicians’ videos on YouTube and more. In fact, the app was so cool that it attracted 150K downloads in three days . Holy tamale. Today, Discovr is applying its music discovery and visualization model for iOS to apps, and it’s just as good, if not better. Granted, I’m a sucker for creative design and spatial data-aggregation tools. Nerdy as charged. Discovr Apps is an interactive map of the 400K+ apps on the App Store. How does it work? Search for your favorite app, or choose one from Discovr’s featured apps, and bing-bang-boom, the app will show your app of choice in an interconnected network of apps that are linked based on their similarities. The similarities, like so many other recommendation services today, is a combo of machine algorithms and human curation. The networks can be expanded on as you go, and if the page were large enough, you could probably create a massive, mind-melting map of all the apps on the app store. Obviously, in offering an interactive map as a method of app discovery, user experience is critical. If the interface sucks, the app is worthless. Discovr CEO Dave McKinney assures me that UX has been top priority for the startup since day 1. And from my quick demo, the interface is awesome: Smooth and seamless. McKinney said that part of their secret to offering a good UX, especially if you’re going for a graphical presentation of data, is having a deep understanding of graphical interfaces and graph theory. Their solution? Bring in a guy with a PhD in graph theory. Tamas Nepusz is a doctor of graph theory that used to work at Last.fm as a research engineer, and he works exclusively on the graph code. It seems to be working. So, when you find an app you like, you can read app descriptions, check out screenshots and ratings, or buy the app directly from the app store — or you can share your favorite apps and maps with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or email. In addition to Discovr’s human+machine approach, the startup wants people from all over the world to contribute to the data set and plans to add data-tuning from the crowd to make its recommendations even better. Oh, and an Android app is not on the way. It looks like Discovr Apps is purely iOS. Sorry, Google. For more, check out the video at the below. CrunchBase Information Filter Squad Information provided by CrunchBase

After Surging Past Angr...

For as long as I can remember, there has been one app that has constantly held the top paid app spot in Apple’s App Store: Angry Birds. Sure, other apps surge to the top briefly. But Angry Birds always comes flying right back. But a new app appears to be bucking that trend. Today is day 3 of The Heist ‘s reign, and sales are quickening. As The Loop noted after a partial day 1, The Heist saw download numbers just over 25,000. This was already enough to overtake Angry Birds. But what’s really remarkable are the day two numbers. There were 89,798 downloads of The Heist on day two. Again, that’s for a paid app ($0.99). There are 86,400 seconds in a day so… yeah, the app is selling at a pace better than one a second. Crazy. In total, that puts downloads now well north of 100,000, and revenues are nearing $100,000 already. In fact, they’re likely well past that number as I write this seeing as the app is also still the top-grossing app in the App Store. So what is fueling the surge? Well first of all, they had a good launch strategy. The team behind The Heist is the same team behind MacHeist , the popular OS X software bundle. They began hinting about The Heist game earlier this year, and actually hid clues in the initial version of Twitter for Mac (which they had a deal with). That proved to be enough to push it to number one, past Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, and other insanely popular apps. And getting to number one has its own perks. Because everyone sees you’re number one, they get curious and want to download your app as well, which led to the day two surge. Well that and the fact that the puzzle game is getting excellent reviews across the board. The tap tap tap team behind the app is also behind the truly great Camera+ app, which happens to be the number seven paid app in the store. In other words, these guys know how to make good apps — and money. You can find The Heist here in the App Store .