Android Market’s “Featu...

Getting featured in the Android Market is starting to have a meaningful impact for mobile app developers. According to the recent news from fitness app maker RunKeeper, the company saw a 637% increase in downloads since November after just a few days of being a featured app in the Android Market “Health & Fitness” section. But is RunKeeper seeing the boost because of the New Year’s resolution-making crowd? Or is being featured in the Android Market really bumping up download numbers in the extreme for anyone who makes it there? RunKeeper’s success story is a great one. On January 1st, the app became featured in the Android Market, which led it to become the #3 “Health & Fitness” app, up from a previous ranking in the 20′s, and #288 in the entire Android Market, which, as we now know , is at 400,000 apps. It’s certainly a hopeful tale, but one that left us with questions – how much is being featured really worth? Was being a “Health & Fitness” app the real story here? Apparently not. Another popular Android application, Lightbox , a photo-sharing app that’s sort of like a mashup of Instagram and Tumblr , was also featured in the Android Market over the holidays, starting on Christmas Eve. Says CEO Thai Tran, in the week following its new highly visible status, Lightbox saw over 500,000 downloads to bring its total number of downloads to over 1.5 million. For comparison purposes, it took Lightbox three months to reach its first 500,000 downloads. More importantly, getting “featured” didn’t always amount to this level of traction. In summer 2011, for example, as Lightbox was working on its first 500K, it was featured in the Android Market for nearly an entire month . And yet, it still took three months to reach 500K. Lightbox’s growth also mirrors  Android’s international growth , Tran notes.  Previously, the U.S. accounted for 55% of Lightbox’s usage, and the U.K. was its #2 country.  But now the U.S. is down to 33% of its usage, and India and Brazil have leapfrogged the U.K. to become its #2 and #3 countries respectively. Lightbox is also seeing traction in Mexico, Malaysia, and Indonesia, says Tran. But Lightbox’s jump was during the holidays – a time when many people are getting brand-new mobile devices and downloading apps. In fact, Flurry said that 1.2 billion apps were downloaded during the 2011 holiday season. What about the Android Market’s impact on growth outside of the Christmas/New Year’s rush? For a third example, let’s look at the intelligent, social to-do list Any.DO, which announced in mid-December that it had seen 500,000 downloads over the past thirty days. The increase, says CEO Omer Perchik, was in part due to the app’s featured status in the Android Market. Although he declined to share hard numbers, he did say that during the app’s featured period, Any.DO was seeing “tens of thousands” of downloads per day – something that’s “an order of magnitude” above its normal download numbers. Other successes include Evernote’s Skitch, which reached 1 million downloads in November, also while it was being featured on the Market. It later  hit 3 million by December . Going further back, in July, Point Inside Maps was featured in the Market for an increase of a more moderate 50,000 downloads per week. So how does an app get featured in the Android Market, developers want to know? That’s easy: build a great app. Any.DO’s Perchik says that he’s never seen unstable, unusable apps getting featured – Google looks for quality. Android Market PM Fernando Delgado previously explained the process , saying that Google has a team of editors and category managers who proactively look at new apps being released on the Market. “If an app is determined to have high potential, it is thoroughly reviewed to make sure it meets the high bar for being featured,” he says. In other words, it’s Google’s own curation process – not just raw download numbers that help an app make the cut.

Use the New Google Map ...

Google does several things, well, make that a lot of things really well. There is no mistaking the fact that they are a very strong company and perhaps even too strong for many people. One thing they do really well is to get end users to do work for them. Here’s where the asterisk in the title comes into play: *The headline says you can WORK for Google but it really is semantics since you actually DO work FOR Google and it’s, of course, for free. Google’s cachet allows it to get people to do a lot of their work for them. People do for a variety of reasons that you can figure out. The latest effort is to make Google maps better. How can YOU do that FOR Google? Use the new Map Maker of course. Map maker is very cool for sure. In the Google Lat Long blog we read With Map Maker, you can easily help ensure that the changing world around you is accurately reflected on the map. Add your favorite gift shop, the nearest tree farm, or even the golf course where you once got that hole in one. It’s also easier to mark the best route to Grandma’s house and draw better buildings with courtyards and crisper corners. The options are endless when it comes to mapping the places you know and love. Once approved, your contributions will appear on Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Maps for mobile for all the world to see. Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing bad or unethical about what Google is doing to enlist the services of unpaid volunteers to improve their product so they sell ads on it. The bottom line is that if people want to do the heavy lifting then all Google has to do it check up behind then it’s a free world it should happen. Google doesn’t totally dismiss these contributors. They had a top contributors gathering in recent months which was a nice touch. In the end though Google can pul this off because people want to contribute to something bigger and usually don’t have the chance to be found. Take this instance from the Google post about a high school kid in NC. You don’t have to be an expert to start using Google Map Maker. High school student and Eagle Scout Tommy Bruce is a mapping superstar who finds mapping fun, fulfilling, and a simple way to help those in his community have the best, most comprehensive information possible. He started by mapping bike trails in his hometown of Mooresville, North Carolina and is now on an exchange program in Puebla, Mexico, mapping unmarked rivers that run through town! After witnessing Tommy’s accomplishments firsthand at the U.S. Geo User Summit, even his mother Margaret began thinking of places that she’s eager to put on the map. Maybe he’l get a job with Google someday after he meets the academic alphabet soup standards that are a pre-requisite to working there after answering mind bending questions. Or maybe, just maybe, Google would hire based on talent without the pedigree? Nah, now we are probably talking about an idea that would only appear in the Google Fantasy Maker.

Accel Backs Brazilian S...

Kekanto , an Yelp-like local guide and site in Brazil, has raised a undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Accel Partners with Kaszek Ventures participating. This actually marks Accel’s fifth investment in Brazil over the past twelve months. Accel Partner Andrew Braccia will join Kekanto’s Board of Directors. Kekanto, which translates as “In which corner?” in Portuguese, is a source of local reviews for millions of people in Brazil. The platform offers consumers the ability to quickly find information on local businesses, tourist attractions, public service offices, and other points of interest in the country. Kekanto´s search and recommendation system blends your social network and demographic information to replicate real life word of mouth. The startup is seeing around 3 million unique monthly visitors and Kekanto will use the new funding to expand to Argentina, Chile, Mexico and other countries in Latin America. It’s no secret that Accel views Brazil has a huge growth market for online services. The venture firm’s recent previous investments in Brazil include Elo7, and Shoes4You.

Google Ventures And Fir...

Peer to peer marketplace CustomMade has raised $2.1 million in Series A funding today, led by First Round Capital and Google Ventures with additional investment from Founder Collective , Launch Capital , Next View Ventures , Andrew McCollum and David Tisch . Like Etsy’s Alchemy feature (now retired ), CustomMade allows customers who want to make custom products like jewelry and furniture post project proposals, and it retains a community of makers that can browse through projects and assign themselves to ones they are suited to. Makers can sign up for and build profiles on the site, which allows customers to browse through their portfolios. The site has over 3,000 makers and has overseen over $2 million in project requests, averaging around $1,500 a job. “A lot of people think that custom is expensive and out of reach, and that’s really not true any more,” says co-founder Mike Salguero, “There’s a lot of trade winds right now about buying local and buying green and supporting your local economy.” “We see a large opportunity in technology platforms that can seamlessly connect consumers with the goods they want specifically designed for them,” said Google Ventures partner Rich Milner in a release,  “By combining local artisans – from the custom furniture maker in New Mexico to the jewelry designer in Austin – to millions of shoppers around the country, CustomMade serves the need of a growing marketplace.” CustomMade plans on using the funding to expand both its staff and site features, with the eventual goal of disrupting big box retail with it suite of personalized products.

Accel, True Ventures An...

With almost a million users and six million songs shared daily, Schematic Labs’ social music sharing app SoundTracking is today announcing that it has raised $4.75 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners , True Ventures and Softbank Capital . SoundTracking co-founder Steve Jang tells me that he plans on using the new funds for hiring and for furthering integration efforts with services like Spotify and Rdio, “We think connecting SoundTracking to consumption services helps take the music moments into your lean back consumption experience,” he says. Future plans for Schematic Labs include building other apps on its backend platform well as taking advantage of the SoundTracking growth they’re seeing in international locations like Japan, Mexico, Brazil and the UK. “We felt that people have music moments every day, and we wanted to build an app they could take out of their pocket to capture and share the soundtrack of their lives,” says Jang, “We want to continue to simplify that experience and make it more meaningful with the popular music consumption services and social networks.” Jang is passionate about the app’s community of users, who he insists view the posting of a “musical postcard” on SoundTracking as an emotional moment, “Our user community is still just in its early days. What we’re really most excited about is the engagement and reach of our music lovers who, given an app made for self-expression, seem to love to share emotions and personal moments on top of status updates and check-ins.” The company previously raised $1.1 million in seed from True Ventures, Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, Keith Rabois, Bill Tai, Alfred Lin, Garrett Camp, and Hunter Walk. SoundTracking 2.0, which @mentions artists whenever their songs are soundtracked, was also just recently released. Here’s video of Jang and I talking about the app’s latest build, below. You can find SoundTracking in the App Store here. Crunchbase SOUNDTRACKING SCHEMATIC LABS Company: Soundtracking Website: Learn more Company: Schematic Labs Website: schematiclabs.com Maker of social entertainment mobile apps for the real world. Learn more