An old expression. Sure. But true. The news cycle is global and the constant negativity and devastation can be dulling. However, what happened to the Northeast coastline communities with Hurricane Sandy is anything but.
It’s easy to gloss over if you weren’t present, but when you see the devastation and can individualize that to a person or family that lost their home, glossing over is not an option.
- There are hundreds of thousands of peoples with flooded homes.
- 8mm people with no electricity at the peak. 6mm now.
- Subway systems and tunnels flooded in NY and NJ.
- Communities literally wiped off the map via the pounding ocean and wind.
Government is definitely doing its job and I think well. City, State, and Federal. Thank You.
I’ve also seen two national/international charitable responses so far.
We need more of that. Lots more.
And on a local level, it’s nice to see that people are opening up their homes and offices to their friends and family and sometimes even complete strangers. We should all do it. I know I am.
Politicians don’t really know what this means. Nor do many long-winded speakers. You know the type.
It’s not about being short, but about being to the point. It’s not about elaborating on points, but on making sure that they are understood. It’s not about obfuscating a fact, but on identifying the figure.
Our world increasingly values this and yet some people just can’t figure it out.
But it’s been forced upon us via Texting, Twitter, and the persistent digital onslaught.
- Texting because typing is just too arduous.
- Twitter because of the hard character cap.
- Everywhere else because of the near zero incremental cost to digital communication/creation.
Ultimately, this is not about limitations, but about competitive advantage and artistic achievement.
TinyCo recently launched a pretty unique affiliate program and it was a very smart move on its part. It’s symptomatic of where user acquisition has gone on mobile apps and makes sense for some very large partners that have bandwidth to handle this sort of personal interaction with a single user acquisition partner.
Let me take a step back. User acquisition is relatively easy to track when it comes to mobile apps (some would disagree). It can get tracked to an install. It can get tracked to a particular action inside an app. Bottom line, the tracking methodologies are pretty standardized.
And the networks manage that process because they have scale, reach, targeting capabilities, optimization, developers, and everything else you need to make sure this process runs smoothly AND efficiently.
But they also take a cut.
TinyCo says. Hey, why are we giving up this cut? We’ll go direct and share actual revenues with you the developer. It’s done two things.
- It can now work directly with larger partners (who can handle this type of interaction), as well as the really long tail partners who will find the time to handle this.
- It has also shifted the payment risk (and cash flow) from an up front per dollar UA fee to a back-end rev share.
Now whether it turns out to be massively successful over the long-term is questionable and that’s because most developers just won’t want to tie their software to a single partner with a single product.
But I still like the move! It should certainly be an ROI positive one.
I’m an Android user (gasp!) and I love many things about the platform.
- The flexibility and variety of what you can accomplish.
- The intuitiveness and seamless integration of Google products.
- The notification system.
- The device diversity of choice.
- And frankly, the freedom to do what I wish.
But one of the things that bothers me is the update frequency on the apps. It’s never ending. Sure I can set it to auto-update, but I’m not sure that would work for me either.
Why all the updates? Now, I know the average user may not mind, but with hundreds of apps, I see a never ending stream of update requests and it gets tiring.
Maybe there’s a middle ground between Android and iOS here?
The carriers are laughing all the way to the bank. We sit here twiddling our thumbs, pontificating on:
- iOS vs. Android.
- Feature phones vs. Smartphones.
- SMS Charges vs. App Workarounds.
- Carrier Billing vs. Credit Card.
- Unlimited Data vs. Data Caps.
Yet, what do must of us do about it? We just pay higher bills. But maybe it’s time to shop around.
If not, the carriers will just keep on banking it.
