TapMetrics

TapMetrics To Be Acquired By Millennial Media

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:21:26 -0500

Today we are pleased to announce that TapMetrics is to be acquired by mobile advertising network Millennial Media. We are very excited for this partnership and all of the benefits it will bring to you as developers. Millennial Media has strong relationships with the largest brand advertisers and, what we consider to be, the best mobile advertising technology and solutions offered today. We plan to work hard in creating improved data analytics tools and greater opportunities for developers that want to monetize their applications through advertising.

The acquisition will not disrupt the day-to-day operations of the site or your account. As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions via our help forum.

Who is Millennial Media?

Millennial Media is the mobile advertising platform offering developers, brand advertisers and publishers the only set of specific, scalable behavioral audiences, robust reporting tools, thousands of apps and the largest reach in the U.S. Their ability to target and engage consumers is unparalleled. As an innovative technology leader, their mobile decisioning, ad serving and mediation platforms are powering the largest companies, applications and advertisers in the media business today. For more information, please visit http://www.millennialmedia.com or follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/millennialmedia.

Thank you for using TapMetrics!

April 2010 360iDev in San Jose, CA

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:36:34 -0500

April 2010 360iDev in San Jose, CA

App Store Changes

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Apple has made some changes to their app store policies recently that may increase the number of app rejections. If your app contains overtly sexual content, it’s not likely to get through the gates in Cupertino. Recently, many apps with women in bikinis or wearing little clothing have been removed from the store.

The second major change was in the policy for applications using user location. Apps that don’t provide a legitmate service to the user cannot use the device location for advertising or otherwise. To meet these guidelines you may turn off user location in the TapMetrics analytics library by setting the withLocation parameter in [TapMetricsAPI startSession:applicationKey withLocation:NO];

Keep these changes in mind when developing your next application

Nexus One

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

I’m really excited to see the Nexus One come out. I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet but I think it will be a great phone. With Google putting it’s power behind a carrier-agnostic device, they may start to shake up the way we buy phones. Without being tied to a certain carrier, the phone could be very attractive to consumers. It makes us excited to be developing tools for Android developers and the Android OS.

Announcing Expanded Accounts

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:16:24 -0500

We’re happy to announce that we have expanded our accounts offerings. Two additional plans are available for users that want to add more than 3 applications to TapMetrics or give more than 1 user access. For both of our paid plans we have included our Buzz Tracker so you can watch for mentions of your apps or company on important review sites, blogs, and Twitter. Our pro plan also features SSL for those that want added security. Any new customer can try any of our paid plans for 30 days for free! Click here to sign up. Thanks for using TapMetrics!

In-app purchases arrive for free apps

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:00:49 -0400

Apple announced yesterday that free apps will support in-app purchasing. Previously an app had to be priced at least at the $.99 level. Lowering this barrier is great news and should provide another way for developers to make money. Whether it is additional levels, more storage space, a la carte wiz-bang features, or further content there will be more avenues for publishers to run their business on mobile. 1,000 points to Apple.

More WiFi please

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:16:08 -0400

Why don’t more airports have free WiFi? http://bit.ly/2yDQsi

Hanging out in Denver

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:51:22 -0400

Great talks at 360iDev today. If you’re in Denver for the conference hit us up on email or twitter.

Thanks to Social Matchbox

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:41:46 -0400

It was great talking to everyone at Social Matchbox last night. Let us know how everything is working for you.

~Chris

Work continues on the Virgin flight to SF.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:57:14 -0400

Work continues on the Virgin flight to SF.

TapMini update released

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:07:10 -0400

Today we released an updated version (0.5.2) of TapMini, our automated sales report downloading tool. The update repairs a connection issue with iTunes Connect after Apple changed parts of the interface. If you don’t already have TapMini you can download it here.

New look and more features

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:59:43 -0400

TapMetrics got a fresh look last night with a new design to the dashboard and analytics views. We added more information to the dashboard so you can get the 30,000 foot view of all your apps immediately. Additionally, we added a feature that will notify you if we think Apple is testing your app. If you are using our analytics service, the new “Active Users” display shows how many people are using your app right now.

Our automated sales retrieval application for Mac OS X, TapMini, has been very popular. We’ve gotten a few questions, though, about why we don’t just take your login information through our site. Other sites may take your login info but we don’t for two reasons. First, we understand this to violate Apple’s Terms of Service for iTunes Connect. You aren’t supposed to reveal your information to anyone and we aren’t allowed to take it. Second, we want you to be comfortable with the security of your info. With TapMini, we never see your login ID or password and none of it ever runs through our server. TapMetrics only processes the sales reports that you choose to upload to your account. By using a menu bar application we also save the reports to your hard drive, backing them up for you locally. If you don’t want to use TapMini, you can still upload reports to your account manually. We want to give you options and peace of mind.

We have a number of additional features that are being tested and should released in the coming days.

You can also check out our help forum to answer any questions you have. Users can help each other out on any topic and we check these boards frequently to make sure your question gets answered. Please bear with us if you have an issue while we are still in beta. Let us know and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks for using TapMetrics.

See you at iPhoneDevCampDC

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:58:19 -0400

TapMetrics is happy to announce we are sponsoring iPhoneDevCampDC on July 31 and Aug 1 in Falls Church, VA. We’re eager to get out and meet some developers from the area, talk with devs about their thoughts on mobile, and show some people what we have been working on.

1000+ Apps in the iTunes Store. Like throwing dirt at a...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:05:23 -0400

1000+ Apps in the iTunes Store. Like throwing dirt at a fence?

There are several tactics for generating revenue from the iTunes store, be it the ever-popular freemium model, advertising dollars from a free application, or in-app content sales. An interesting model we explored this week is what we like to call the “Dirt at the Fence” approach. If you throw a bunch of dirt at a fence, some of it’s going to get through. If you throw enough apps at the iTunes store, you’re going to make some sales. In case you may be wondering, as of a couple weeks ago the vendor with the largest number of apps for sale in the store offered 1616 applications (about 10.8% of the TOTAL store inventory). That’s a wee bit above the average of 3.79 apps per publisher.

More than a few people have figured this approach out, with the numbers 2 and 3 spots occupied by vendors offering 1061 and 928 apps in the store, respectively. Twelve other vendors each display more than 200 applications for download in the iTunes Store, pricing them generally at the $0.99 or $1.99 levels. Many of these vendors have created a simple framework and generated numerous apps with slightly different content. For example, a book reader app that contains a single novel, or a news aggregator with each individual app focused on a different major city or sports team.

A publisher that offers that many applications for sale is bound to make some money. Even if the leader here is selling just 1 of each app per day, that yields over $1100 in revenue, and that’s after Apple takes its cut. Selling 1 unit a day from just 100 of those apps probably brings in enough to pay rent for the month, and that is less than 7% of the vendor’s inventory. Under the same assumptions, pricing an app at just $1 more could bring in nearly $40,000 per month in revenue. One of the vendors we are referencing here has set the price of an app in his model at $4.99. We’re guessing he codes from his yacht in the Caribbean and submits to iTunes Connect via satellite.

So our belief is that there is a way for some people to make money selling iPhone apps. We hope, however, that this model doesn’t overwhelm the iTunes store so that generating cash comes before providing an incredible user experience. For the sake of the store, we wish that developers continue to find rewards for creating engaging software apps to keep us sane in airports and lines at the DMV. TapMetrics helps developers make their apps better and, as a result, reap their rewards.

What is TapMetrics?

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:40:16 -0400

TapMetrics is software suite that helps iPhone developers make their applications better.

Bitfire Systems, the company behind TapMetrics, was created to develop iPhone applications. We started coding some apps, got them into the App Store and then we were confronted with the mess that is iTunes Connect. We used Excel to track our downloads by importing the CSV files and read through the reviews page by page, it became tedious and a huge waste of our time. So I began coding up some quick and dirty solution that we lovingly called Yeti.

So as our consumption of data about our iPhone applications grew, so did Yeti. As we showed it around to some of our developer friends, they wanted to get their hands on it. Sadly, I didn’t think ahead and there wasn’t even multiple user support, let alone multiple account support for our friends to use it.

So I sat down, threw out all the old code and started again with a greater focus on what problems Yeti was to solve. That was the birth of TapMetrics and in making that decision, we became dedicated to finding the simplest, most hassle free and productive ways to enable developers to understand their users and improve their applications.

So in a nutshell, here is what TapMetrics can do for you as a developer.

Provide you with the tools to gather insight and understanding about your users and how they’re using you’re application.
To enable you to directly communicate with your users and gather feedback and offer incentives to your users.
Built-in ratings system that is flexible to your application.
Highly detailed analytics about how your application is being used and highlighting patterns to you.
Remote crash reporting helping you fix the bugs that fell through the cracks.
Track your downloads and financial reports and provide you the tools to download from iTunes Connect and upload to us hassle free.
Automatically gather your application reviews from every iTunes store and translate them for you.
Track your application ranking (and even your competitors!) over time.
Track the buzz about your applications
And a lot more!

We got a lot of other really great stuff that we’re working on for you including an iPhone application and API to both TapMetrics and our other related services that we’re announcing at launch.

We’re still in development, working to try and get it right the first time. If you want to know when we’re ready for you, head over to our website and enter your email address.

- Nolan

First look at TapMetrics.

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:52:00 -0400

First look at TapMetrics.

Moo Mini Cards I’m handing out at 360iDev. - Nolan

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:14:21 -0500

Moo Mini Cards I’m handing out at 360iDev.

- Nolan

360iDev!

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:06:33 -0500

I’m at 360iDev this week and Chuck Smith was kind enough to let me demo TapMetrics towards the end of his great presentation about iTunes Connect.

For all the people at 360iDev, we’ll be handing out cards to let people sign up for TapMetrics before we release it. If you get one of these cards, you’ll get TapMetrics free for 6 months, so be sure to come and find me.

- Nolan

Hi!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:09:00 -0500

We’re hard at work getting ready for an beta launch. If everything goes right, I will be handing out some beta access cards at 360iDev, so make sure you come and find me.

-Nolan