app stores

Twitter’s crazy week drives social apps’ growth, Google expands user choice billing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 12, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, Elon Musk, Google, This Week In Apps, TwitterNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters It’s a Twitter dumpster fire and I can’t look away Image Credits: Cloudytronics (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Where to even begin? This week Twitter became one of the most chaotic, most disastrous social networks in history — and arguably, also the most interesting, in a sort of rubbernecking kind of way. There was something new taking place either on the platform directly or within the company itself at nearly every minute. In just a handful of days since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has seen the following: The launch of Twitter Blue (11/9) followed by a pause (11/10), followed by its disappearance from the app entirely (11/11). Widespread impersonation of high-profile accounts, including Musk’s own, by Verified users — including, almost immediately, the $8/month Twitter Blue Verified users after the new subscription went live. The launch of Official badges (11/8) for high-profile accounts, followed by their disappearance (11/9) followed by their return (11/11). Elon Musk’s reveal of his plan to have Twitter enter the payments business. Further departures of key execs, including its most senior cybersecurity staffer Lea Kissner (11/10), chief privacy officer Damien Kieran (11/10), chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty (11/10) Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth (11/10) — the latter who has been one of the last remaining sane voices at the company amid the upheaval. Musk held a call with advertisers (11/9) that did not offer any solid assurances that all would be well. After this call, the call’s host and head of ad sales Robin Wheeler, quit. Later, she tweeted “I’m still here” after being persuaded by Musk to stay (11/10). After the departure of key executives across trust, safety, data governance and security, the FTC issued a rare warning to Twitter (11/10). The agency said had been “tracking the developments at Twitter with deep concern,” and that “no CEO or company is above the law.” Twitter was put under an FTC consent order in 2011 after being found to have misused user data. The order requires, among other things, that new product rollouts receive full security reviews and it dictates what Twitter can and cannot do with data. The number of rapid changes, eliminations of departments, departures of key personnel and fast launches and shutdowns of new products are now raising questions as to whether or not Twitter has managed to remain compliant with the FTC’s decree. The lead regulator in the European Union then came after Twitter, setting a meeting for next week to discuss concerns including the data protection officer’s departure and whether Twitter’s main establishment for GDPR purposes is still located in Ireland. Musk addressed employees at an all-hands (11/10) and warned them Twitter may have a net negative cash flow of billions in 2023 and suggested bankruptcy was not out of the question. One can argue that Musk was right to take a new approach at Twitter, which was losing money and failing to grow its user base. Coming in with fresh ideas and swapping out the executive team isn’t that unusual in a takeover, nor are widespread layoffs when a company is in financial trouble. New product experimentation is also to be expected. And revamping Twitter Blue, which has so far failed to attract subscribers, makes sense too. But it’s not the what that’s the issue here, really — it’s the how. Musk clearly had not thought through the impact of his changes and he laid off people who could have offered deeper insight. His move to immediately make deep cuts across Twitter (after weird ideas about code reviews, apparently), meant he missed the opportunity to actually listen to current staff who could explain what Twitter has tried, what’s failed and why they’re doing the things they are. Even if Musk disagreed with Twitter’s current direction, those understandings could be used to better inform his future decisions. Instead, he’s approached Twitter as a toy to be played with, saying even “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” And it already has. Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2022 Living up to its promise, the first project Twitter landed on saw it reinventing the wheel. Musk, having only perceived the value of a blue Verified badge as a status symbol, believed a wide swath of Twitter users would pay for the privilege of owning one. What he didn’t understand (unlike most of Twitter’s user base), is that Verification is actually a service the platform provides its community, not just an ego-pleasing checkmark. In fact, many of those with the original badge don’t see it as a status symbol, and wouldn’t pay for the “honor” of having one. Instead, the original blue badge was a way to quickly see that someone is who they claim to be or that they’re a trusted source of news and information. Musk, on the other hand, thinks “citizen journalists” and everyday folks

Why mobile subscription management platforms are enjoying tailwinds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Adapty, app revenue, app stores, Apps, EC Consumer Applications, mobile app developers, RevenueCat, StartupsNo Comments

Game engine company Unity and adtech company IronSource finalized their merger this week, aiming to “create an end-to-end for developers to build and monetize games,” ZebethMedia reported. While there’d be a lot to say about the deal from the perspective of game developers, we’d like to look at this from a different angle and wonder who might one day do the same, but for non-gaming apps. Earlier today, we reported that New York-based startup Adapty raised $2.5 million to date to help mobile app developers grow their revenue. While the company is perhaps more focused on customer revenue growth acceleration than some of its competitors, it is not alone in its broader space, which could be described as mobile subscription infrastructure. By magnitude of funding, the leader by far is YC-backed RevenueCat, which has raised $56.5 million in total, including a $40 million Series B in 2021. And with clients like Buffer, Notion and PhotoRoom, it is arguably the one that comes up more often in conversations.

With new capital, Adapty is betting it can help app devs make more money • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 9, 2022Posted in Adapty, app revenue, app stores, Apps, mobile developers, StartupsNo Comments

Mobile developers earned more than $260 billion on Apple’s App Store between its launch in 2008 and the end of 2021. And yet, Apple doesn’t provide an easy way for companies to maximize how much they make from their apps — and neither does Google, which owns the rival Google Play Store. Enter New York City-based Adapty, which hopes to help developers earn more from their apps. So far, it has been doing this mostly by powering A/B testing for paywalls, but it has a broader road map, its co-founder and CEO, Vitaly Davydov, told ZebethMedia. It is never a good time to leave money on the table, but even less so when Apple moves to collect a 30% cut of even more mobile app trade and as overall mobile app spending might be declining, meaning that developers are likely hungrier than ever for additional income. Paywall A/B testing helps optimize revenue, by letting developers figure out which conversion screen will bring the best results. It is one of the main offerings of Adapty, but not its only one: The startup sees itself as growth-focused, rather than infrastructure-focused. Adapty is used by about 2,500 apps, up from 50 when it raised pre-seed funding in 2020. Its team has also grown to some 40 full-time employees, but there’s more hiring to come, according to Davydov, at a time when other startups are laying off staff or freezing hires. Having closed a seed round this year that brings its funding to date to $2.5 million, Adapty is focusing on two goals that require more headcount: geographic expansion and incorporating machine learning. The latter will be used to come up with features including a lifetime value (LTV) prediction tool. Growth2 Adapty’s round was led by Surface Ventures with participation from irrvrntVC, two funds with which the startup connected via 500 Startups. Adapty was one of the companies presenting at the accelerator’s 27th demo day in February 2021 — and one of ZebethMedia’s favorites at the time. Adapty has been “on track” since graduating from the program, Davydov said. Tracking is the word: The startup’s landing page claims “8 million monthly tracked events.” This tracking is done on behalf of Adapty’s clients and fed back to them in the form of analytics and dashboards, which can be used by developers and user acquisition managers alike. Image Credits: Adapty Adapty serves clients big and small, from solo developers on its free tier who may be able to learn from its community and content to larger clients attracted by its growth-focused features. Adapty’s decision to add an LTV prediction tool is inspired both by customer demand and by firsthand experience from Davydov and his co-founders, Kirill Potekhin and Dima Podoprosvetov. The team thinks it is now better placed to predict LTV than app owners themselves. “This is a thing that you are unlikely to be able to repeat internally, because we see a lot of data, and they are diversified — from all categories in the app store[s],” Davydov said. “And by design, we have more knowledge about the app market, while if you have only one application, it only shows your data. We believe we can build much more accurate models because of this.” Adapty isn’t alone in the mobile subscription management category, whose leader is arguably RevenueCat. But its road map connects two trends that seem to be on the rise — leveraging pooled data and applied machine learning. We will keep on tracking these, as well as the ongoing impact of Apple’s privacy policy changes.

Elon buys Twitter, new App Store rules, gambling ads backlash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 29, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, developers, Google, Mobile, This Week In AppsNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Musk buys Twitter It’s official, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. In typical Musk fashion, the transition has been nothing but chaotic, with the deal closing just ahead of the deadline set by the Delaware Chancery Court — the court where Musk was planning to try to exit the deal by claiming Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform. (He was really looking to get the price down, of course!) In any event, the Telsa and SpaceX exec now has a new toy and everyone is waiting to see what comes next. Earlier, Musk had hinted at layoffs, then later retracted his statements, saying he wouldn’t fire 75% after all. However, he did immediately clear out the C-suite, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde — a sign that he’s planning to fill out Twitter’s top ranks with execs who will do his own bidding and not fight for the Twitter of days past. Still, Musk’s talk about a Twitter that’s more permissive of “free speech” doesn’t quite align with his message to advertisers posted shortly after the deal’s close: He promised marketers that Twitter can’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” That’s clearly a tacit acknowledgment on Musk’s part that advertisers don’t want to post their content next to hate speech-filled tweets. And despite Musk’s plans to grow Twitter’s subscription business, around 90% of Twitter’s revenue today comes from advertising. Given what he had to pay to own Twitter, Musk probably doesn’t want to have to pay to keep it running, too. App Store Review Guidelines now give Apple a cut of NFTs, in-app advertising Image Credits: ZebethMedia Along with the launch of iOS 16.1, Apple also introduced new App Store Review Guidelines. Among the major changes were two new rules designed to give Apple a bigger slice of the NFT market and Meta’s core advertising business. The company said apps will be allowed to list, mint, transfer and let users view their own NFTs, but clarified that owning an NFT could not be a shortcut to unlocking any more features in an app. In other words, the ownership of an NFT shouldn’t be a way to route around Apple’s in-app purchases. In addition, Apple said NFT apps can’t display external links or other calls-to-action to purchase NFTs — that can only take place through Apple’s own in-app purchases system, as well. This change is not all that surprising. As the web3 market grows, Apple wanted to find a way to stake its claim on the revenue and transactions that are occuring inside these new apps. Plus, it’s a better consumer experience for NFT marketplace apps to not just function as a showcase for users’ purchases, but as a place where users can actually transact. The other big rule adjustment, however, is a bit more startling. In a bold move, Apple essentially said it deserves a cut of Meta’s ads business as well as any other social app. The new rule around social media apps now states that purchases of “boosts” have to flow through Apple’s in-app purchase system. This could impact any app that sells the ability to boost a post to a wider audience, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, Twitter, dating apps and others. Meta, of course, took significant issue with this change, saying that Apple’s policy undercuts others in the digital economy after Apple had previously said it wouldn’t take a share of developer ad revenue. While Meta isn’t exactly a sympathetic player here, it’s concerning that Apple has decided it can now tax advertising inside iOS apps at the same time it runs its own expanding ads business. That seems like a move regulators will need to look into asap. App Store gambling ads backlash Speaking of Apple’s ads business…The company’s App Store ads platform expanded this week to include new ad slots like the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings. The slots are available in all countries as of October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings. Developers, however, were immediately disturbed by the instant deluge of gambling ads that appeared marketed alongside their own, including against kids’ applications and, in at least one case, a gambling addiction recovery app. This was a poor look for Apple. After all, the gambling category itself is already controversial — many developers would rather not share an app marketplace with these often predatory apps in the first place, much less have them advertised alongside their own. Apple at least moved quickly to respond to the backlash by “pausing” gambling ads and a few other categories on App Store product pages, but the company didn’t say how long this pause would last or what it planned to do about the situation in the long term. Spotify accuses Apple of anti-competitive behavior, this

Play Store revamp, Google antitrust suit updates, BeReal’s real traction • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, Google, Mobile, mobile apps, This Week In AppsNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Epic Games and Match attempt to expand their antitrust lawsuits against Google Image Credits: Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images Epic Games and Match Group are looking to fortify their antitrust lawsuits against Google by adding new counts to their initial complaint, filed last year, which illustrate the lengths Google supposedly went to in order to dominate the Android app market. The companies, a week ago, filed a motion to amend their complaints in their cases against Google, which now allege that Google paid off business rivals not to start other app stores that would put them in competition with Google Play. This would be a direct violation of U.S. antitrust law known as the Sherman Act, the amended complaint states. Epic Games and Match Group had originally detailed Google’s plans in a filing last year, where they detailed a Google program known as “Project Hug,” or later, the “Apps and Games Velocity Program.” This effort was focused on paying game developers hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to keep their games on the Google Play Store, it had said. Now, Epic Games and Match Group are looking to add to their complaint with two new allegations specifying how Google had either paid or otherwise induced its potential competitors to agree to not distribute apps on Android in competition with the Play Store, including through their own competing app stores. Google, it reads, had identified developers who were “most at risk … of attrition from Play” and then approached them with an offer of an agreement. The complaint now deems this a “per se” violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations,” it says. (You can read the full story here on ZebethMedia.) Google Play revamp continues Image Credits: Google Google announced this week new features for its Play Store that are designed to put more of developers’ store listing assets “front and center.” The company says that on large-screened devices, like tablets, foldables and Chromebooks, the Play Store redesign will make better use of app screenshots, videos and descriptions directly in the Apps and Games Home. This will help Android users when they’re browsing for new apps and games to install, Google says. It’s also adding the ability for developers to upload Chromebook-specific screenshots in the Play Console, to better portray the Chromebook experience. Developers can upload up to eight screenshots, in the recommended 16:9 screenshots for landscape, with dimensions of 1080-7690px. Google is updating its quality guidelines for tablets for consistency across large screens, as well, but notes that previous uploads won’t be impacted by the changes. Google additionally published a set of content quality guidelines to help developers learn best practices about how to showcase apps on large screens. The changes announced this week follow an earlier revamp of the Play Store that offered users the ability to filter search results by device, making it easier for them to discover and download apps for non-phone devices like smartwatches, TVs and cars, including through remote installs. The feature was timely, given Google’s recent debut of its first Pixel-branded smartwatch this month. BeReal’s real traction Gen Z social media app BeReal encourages its users to take a photo every day — a format designed to create a daily habit. But only a small number of the app’s users are currently doing so, new estimates from a third-party app intelligence firm indicate. According to research from Sensor Tower, BeReal is demonstrating significant traction across some metrics — it topped 53 million worldwide installs across the App Store and Google Play and has seen its monthly active users jump by 2,254% since January 2022, for example. But only 9% of its active Android installs are opening the app every day as of the third quarter of this year, the firm found. Active users are a better indication of an app’s adoption than downloads, as many people will install an app out of curiosity to check it out, but then abandon the app if they don’t end up enjoying the experience. On this front, BeReal is still trailing established social media giants, Sensor Tower says. Today, 9% of BeReal’s active installs on Android (users who downloaded the app and are actively using it) are now launching the app daily. That’s far behind Instagram and TikTok. Instagram leads this category with 39% of its active installs opening the app every day, while TikTok comes in second with 29%. This is followed by Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter at 27%, 26%, 20% and 18%, respectively. Image Credits: Sensor Tower Of course, BeReal proponents point out that the app’s Android adoption is not at the same pace as iOS, as we said in our initial report. With many of its new installs being from young people in the U.S. — where iOS is preferred — this figure may not present a full picture of the app’s current usage.