Spotlight
Why am I shutting down Kozmos? - Azer Koçulu's Journal
TL;DR: it seems Google is running an automated clean-up operation on the Chrome Extension Store, and it’s causing so much frustration for some developers that they’re giving up and shutting down.
How does this relate to mobile apps? Well, the only thing stopping this sort of debacle from happening on the App/Play Store is good luck and market incentives.
In many ways, the Chrome Extension store is a pale parody of the app ecosystem — submissions are ostensibly vetted for quality, there is a shadowy ‘review team’ with the arbitrary power to decide what gets a blessing and what gets a curse, and there are plenty of false positives that get overturned after further [human] review...if you have the right connections.
There have never not been complaints from developers about the issues with platform curation, but the App and Play Stores are high-profile enough that bad review behavior usually gets noticed and quickly corrected. Not so with the Chrome Extension Store, and there’s no real reason why this couldn’t happen to mobile apps too, if the incentive structure were to change.
As one commenter on Hacker News observed:
Ultimately, Google's business model is about earning fractions of a cent per view/download and making it up in volume. Their profit margin depends on relentless cost optimization, and humans are inevitably the most expensive part of their support/maintenance systems.
Google undoubtedly doesn't want to put extension writers out of business, but if they adjust their procedures to give cases like this real human attention then they will undoubtedly allow a few dozen spammers/scammers to also receive human attention.
Interesting Reads
The Rise of TikTok and Understanding Its Parent Company, ByteDance
You definitely know about TikTok. But do you really know about TikTok?
My guess is possibly not. TikTok is just the tip of the ByteDance iceberg, and for those of us outside China, it’s hard to imagine a company able to ‘out-tech-giant’ Facebook and Google in the near future...but this is what it could look like.
Fair warning: this is an excellent article, but it’s thorough and quite long. Expect to spend 20-30 minutes.
Walled Gardens
Not Even a Pandemic Can Slow Down the Biggest Tech Giants
…in fact, much like other superficially roadblock-esque developments (*cough* How GDPR is Helping Big Tech and Hurting the Competition *cough*), it's actually making them stronger.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft, or the “Faaam,” as I like to call them, spent almost $29 billion on R&D last quarter, up 17% from the same quarter last year. That is bigger than the entire annual budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—and NASA is supposed to get us to Mars.
Longer term, antitrust action might start tripping things up, but (surprise, surprise...) even that is being slowed by the pandemic.
Facebook launches CatchUp, an audio-only calling app that shows who’s ready to chat now
Facebook has an in-house innovation studio called NPE Team. This provides flexibility to build and test things without the...hmm…‘baggage’ of the full Facebook brand (the word Facebook only appears once on the CatchUp App Store page — buried in the copyright).
This latest test is basically Sherlocking both Houseparty and Clubhouse (which isn't even publicly available yet). Especially combined with the new Messenger Rooms feature, you can pretty easily guess where this is going.
Tips & Techniques
How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users
Have you ever wondered how the big names we all recognize (Tinder, Uber, Superhuman, TikTok, Product Hunt, Netflix, etc.) actually got their first cohort of users?
Here are the real, first-hand stories.
If nothing else, these are worth reading as proof that while Silicon Valley was a good show, truth is often even stranger than fiction.
UX
What the challenger banks did differently – Built for Mars
Everything about this multi-part analysis — from the writing style, to the data graphs, to the tweetable takeaways, to the embedded step-by-step app walkthroughs — is just so on point.
It might be one of the finest pieces of mobile-related content I’ve ever read. Even if you have no interest in challenger banks, you’ll enjoy it.
Adobe tests inserting intrusive ads in Android's share sheet and ‘Open with’ popup
Android Police clearly thinks this is a Very Bad Thing™.
I’m not convinced. Yes, the situation could clearly get out of hand (at least, with the current OS implementation) if everyone started doing this hack. But at the same time, it seems like exactly the kind of just-in-time, intent-based app discovery that a typical user would find quite valuable...and which is currently very challenging in the mobile ecosystem.
Data
Has Online Grocery Shopping Peaked? Most Still Prefer In-Store
What drove the rapid increase in online grocery’s penetration? It was fear—fear of catching the virus.
Online grocery delivery is one of the mobile verticals that went through the roof back in March. Now it’s starting to come back down.
I think we should expect that the new normal will be ‘more of us buy groceries online, sometimes’. People trying Instacart a few times this spring isn’t going to be enough to reach ‘most of us stop going to the grocery store forever’.
The Encore
Podcast
Eventbrite: Casey Winters
Connecting Users to the Value of Your Product
Master at building community on the internet, Casey took his passion for user-generated content and built a career on creating sustainable growth strategies for companies like Pinterest, Grubhub, and Airbnb.
At Pinterest, he drove an increase in sign-ups from Google by 50%, a tactic today that's still copied by Instagram and LinkedIn. Casey talks how companies can react to coronavirus, the mindset around building growth teams, and shares practical advice on decisions that build fulfilling careers. All this and more on this episode of How I Grew this. Listen now on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
Listen Now
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | SoundCloud | Stitcher
Some weeks, life seems like a graph with an exponential y-axis — compared to recent events out in the real world, nothing in this newsletter really moves the needle.
Still, if there is one cliché about tech entrepreneurs that seems to stick more than any other, it’s
making the world a better place. Seeing public statements of support rolling in from across our industry is extremely encouraging; seeing tangible action is even better. But neither is a substitute for individual contributions. I know these are just pixels on the screen of a random internet newsletter, but do something this week that pushes you outside your usual comfort zone. Make a bigger donation. Have an awkward conversation. Amplify a voice that usually wouldn’t be heard. Just…don’t leave it all to someone else.So how does mobile fit into the picture of this week? If we’re being honest, it probably doesn’t...at least, not as a meaningful standalone topic — mobile is just a platform. No one in the streets is protesting the success or failure of a mobile marketing campaign, and it would be absurd if they were.
But platforms provide the foundation on which other things can be built. So, after we’ve each done everything we can to make an immediate difference this week, let us go use this platform to build great things. Things that DO move the needle. Things that will ensure the spark of change grows into something more. And if you know of any powerful black voices in mobile that should be highlighted in our upcoming mobile growth events or newsletters, please reply and let me know!
PS, if you haven’t already, please consider filling out the 2020 Mobile Growth Survey. It’s open for a few more days, and we’re throwing in a Branch hoodie to the first ten submissions from this link!
Alex Bauer