Instagram Denies Holiday User Drop

Sure, it’s not unlike the New York Post to be sensationalist. But in this case it misinterpreted data to suggest Instagram was hit harder by backlash to its terms of service changes than it actually was. Combined with it being a quiet-ish holiday news week, I am taking a story it published today on a 25 percent drop in Instagram users with a little more than a grain of salt.

Basically, it notes that figures from AppData demonstrate that Instagram lost 4 million daily active users — nearly a 25 percent drop to 12.4 million from 16.4 million — between December 19 and December 26. And as the NYP terms it, people are walking away in a “rage against rules.” The Post blames the decline on Instagram’s new, more commercially-minded terms of service — which it rolled back on December 21, i.e., in the middle of its DAU plummet, in response to public outcry.

Now, I should point out that I personally really like Instagram, both as a way to post my own pictures, but also as a way of viewing those posted by others. But I’m no apologist, either. That being said, here are some further observations that give a slightly bigger picture about what is going on:

– Yes, AppData notes that Instagram lost 4 million DAUs over the holiday period, as based on Facebook logins via the app. But it’s also seen some gains (according to the same data): weekly active users in that period are up by 1 million (currently at 28.5 million), and monthly active users are up by 1.1 million (currently at 43 million). DAUs also seem to be up a bit since Christmas, and they are now down by only 3.5 million over the last seven days.

– AppData doesn't show an app's full user count or even a representative sample. In this case it shows users who connected their Instagram accounts to Facebook and either logged in with their Facebook credentials, searched for their Facebook friends, or shared to Facebook. That leaves out tons of users who use Instagram independently. The decline in Instagram usage may have been more pronounced amongst Facebook-connected users as they may have been exposed to more viral backlash to the TOS change via the news feed.

– There are other photo apps that have seen fluctuations in DAUs and MAUs in the last week. Look at Hipstamatic, or Snapseed, or Flickr, whose well-timed launches made some people wonder whether it could replace Instagram.

– The NYP story compares this to last Thanksgiving, which was rich pickins for Instagram. Then it celebrated record postings as people rushed to snap their turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. But this time around, the Christmas “Poke” effect may be at work:

As Josh pointed out in reference to stories of how another photo app from Facebook, Poke, is slipping after an initial burst of interest, people who would have received new iOS devices will be downloading essential apps this week rather than the second wave of nice-to-have apps. The same could apply to apps like Instagram — not just on iOS but Android as well.

– A week and a half ago, we published some data looking at whether Instagram traffic had dropped off as a result of the removal of preview “Cards” on Twitter. The answer: Yes, referral traffic went down from Twitter, but Instagram traffic overall appeared to be holding up, at least at that point.

In that post, I noted that any decline could have to do with Twitter, but could also be related to the hullabaloo over terms of service; or even a newer version of the app that is getting worse ratings than older versions. The same applies here.

In short, there are a number of reasons for a decline in daily active users at Instagram (some alarming, some seasonal). Yes, it may be that people are voting with their fingers, and if that’s the case it will likely be something that Facebook and Instagram will have to consider as they think of how to make money with the app. But to directly relate it to an already overblown situation smells off.

(And yes, I’ve reached out to Instagram, Kevin Systrom and AppData for further clarification. Happy Holidays.)

Update: Instagram itself calls the story inaccurate: “This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram.”

[Additional reporting by Josh Constine]

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Rethinking The Mobile App “Walkthrough”

Lately, it seems that many mobile apps, upon first launch, are stepping users through multi-screen “walkthroughs” where all the features of the app are demonstrated, painstakingly, one-by-one. Worse still, are those overlays of help screens that appear at start up, with the scrawled handwriting, circles and arrows best left on whiteboards – not in user education material.

That’s not to say that apps don’t need to explain their functions to users. But some are taking things too far. Long, step-by-step tutorials are not what users want to see when launching apps. And to be clear, I’m talking about apps here, not games. Mobile games are a different beast, with a slightly different set of rules.

The question, simply put: if a mobile app includes a “walkthrough,” has it already failed? That’s the premise of an article trending on Hacker News, written by Visual and User Interface Designer Max Rudberg. And like many posts with catchy, linkbaiting titles (“If you see a UI walkthrough, they blew it”) people are reacting viscerally to the headline without fully digesting the meat of the article’s content. For what it’s worth, I think Rudberg has a point, even if he’s over-generalized the situation.

Currently the top comment on the Hacker News post, as per usual, is contrary. “This is utter nonsense,” the commenter rebuts. But I don’t think that it is. Sure, you can always pull out examples of apps that actually do require extensive walkthroughs, or you can hedge and say, well, people learn things differently – some people appreciate and need walkthroughs! Or you can talk about how your mom or dad wouldn’t know how to do anything on a mobile phone without a tutorial. Or how there are different types of apps and different types of walkthroughs. And sure, that’s all true. It’s like everything else in life: the issue is not black or white. There’s nuance here.

But can we talk about walkthroughs possibly heading into overuse territory?

Lets.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that in too many cases with new apps, the existence of the walkthrough speaks to core issues with the design. It can come across as lazy. Anything more than a couple of basic pointers sends a message to users that this app is complex, it’s complicated, and now I need to hold your hand while you learn to use it.

That feels wrong on some level. This is mobile. It’s meant to be simple. Accessible.

Apps are not enterprise software with hundreds of functions. They’re not bloated Office suites with overstuffed ribbons filled with a dizzying array of choices. They’re not even desktop software, requiring complicated installations and configuration procedures that once had users phoning I.T. support for help. They are apps, and the user generally already knows what they’re for before they installed it.

Maybe the user found it featured in a list, but they didn’t install it blindly. They saw the list, read the title and/or description, looked at screenshots and thought to themselves, “hmm, a camera that lets you add filters to your photos! I’m going to install that!”

And if they didn’t come across the app serendipitously, then they actually performed a specific keyword-based search and the app appeared in the search results where they selected it from among dozens of others. Or maybe they installed in after reading about it on the web, or hearing a friend talk about it.

The point is, the user to some extent already knows what the app is for. They’ve got the basics down already. Where do developers think they’re losing them, exactly? It’s not intuitive which button to tap first? Where specific content is found? How to perform a specific task? Does the app have a cold start problem (it’s social, but you have to add friends first)? For many of these challenges, the solution doesn’t have to be a long walkthrough or messy overlay. It can just be a better design. A better layout. A better sign-up flow.

Look, we grew up on a web were we had to click “Next” and “I agree” and where we had to learn to click an “X” to close all those pop-up ads. Walkthroughs often leave users with similar feelings – they’re the cruft that has to be scraped away before you actually get to use the app.

If the developer thinks a walkthough is still in order, then maybe it can be a screen or two and a few words. That’s still a walkthrough, yes, but a far more tolerable one. Or it can be just some intuitive hints that appear during the app’s use.

At the end of the day, walkthroughs, while sometimes unavoidable, are not the best part about using an app. Using the app is the best part about using the app, and getting there as quickly as possible should be developers’ goal.

Screenshots via Archer Group; mobile tuts

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Touch Publishing Platform Onswipe Now Reaching 10M Monthly Active Users On iOS

Onswipe, a startup that helps publishers build websites optimized for iPads and other touchscreen devices, is closing out what sounds like a big year. Content published through the Onswipe platform reached 44 million unique visitors over the course of the year, the company says, and it’s now reaching 10 million active users per month on iOS. (Onswipe is also available on Android and Kindle Fire, but they make a very small contribution to the total.)

To put that into perspective, CEO and co-founder Jason Baptiste calculates that Onswipe’s unique iPad visitors in the US (a number that he isn’t releasing) now exceed the 3.2 million iPad uniques for WordPress and Tumblr combined. He based that on Quantcast’s mobile traffic data for WordPress.com and Tumblr — for example, WordPress has a reported 12.5 million mobile uniques in the US, then when you take into account that only 31 percent of that traffic comes from iOS, and only 37 percent of that comes from the iPad, you get 1.4 million uniques from the iPad.

Most of Onswipe’s visits (72 percent) came from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom (6.6 percent), Canada (4.8 percent), and Australia (2.7 percent). Baptiste also said that 61 percent of readers viewed articles in portrait mode, versus 39 percent in landscape. And the most popular article this year was “How to Jump Start a Car,” followed by this news article about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

There’s been a lot of talk about what the tablet means for the future of publishing and journalism, most recently around the shutdown of News Corp’s tablet-focused publication The Daily. Not surprisingly for someone who’s focused on browser-based publishing, Baptiste said The Daily’s growth was hindered by its paywall, and even by requiring people to download an app.

“The iPad just now is hitting its stride, but it’s hard to build a media business on a limited audience,” he said.

Ultimately, Baptiste said The Daily’s failure doesn’t change the fact that “the world is certainly shifting from the desktop.” But the issue for tablet publishers may be as much about building a sustainable business as it is about finding an audience. On that front, Baptiste doesn’t have any compelling numbers to share, though he does say that 2013 will be “a very significant revenue year.”

Until now, he said Onswipe has been focused on growing the publisher network and the audience, but that’s changing. There will be a suite of new ad products next year, allowing Onswipe to tell publishers that it’s not just going to improve their mobile presence, but also bring them “large increases in revenue,” Baptiste said. He also pointed out that the company hired its first chief revenue officer, Jared Hand, back in August.

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Roamz Prepares A “Street View For Social” Using New Google Maps iOS SDK

Roamz, a local search startup for web and mobile, is today showing off one of the first implementations of the new Google Maps iOS SDK in its new iPad app, due out after the holidays. The Maps iOS SDK, which was released at the time of the Google Maps iOS app launch earlier this month, allows mobile developers who use maps inside their apps to use Google Maps instead of Apple’s implementation.

The SDK also includes support for both 2D and 3D views, so users can tilt and rotate the map using gestures inside the app. And Roamz has put these 3D maps to clever use. The company, which sources real-time posts from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram to help users find nearby businesses and other places of interest, is using the Google Maps 3D angle and is then layering the social content on top of the buildings.

“Where we want to get to is a ‘Street View’ for social,” explains Roamz’ founder Jonathan Barouch.”You’re walking in New York and you’ll see the social kind of popping out of the buildings. There’s no other 3D mapping that we’re aware of that we could use. We were waiting for this to come out,” he adds.

To be clear, the 3D mapping via Google Maps will launch first in the company’s iPad application, before it arrives in the iPhone version. Barouch says that while the iPhone app is more targeted towards helping people find things nearby (generally within a 1 mile radius), the iPad app will be more about discovery. The company started off as a tool for serendipitous discovery, in fact, before shifting its focus earlier this year to user intent. That is, now if a user wants to find some good coffee shops nearby, they can just type that in the Roamz mobile application.

But the iPad app isn’t trying to return Roamz to its “serendipitous discovery” roots – instead, it’s just about exploring a little further out. “It’s more about discovery – for travel, it’s awesome,” says Barouch. “If I’m going to Paris and I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but I want to collect a bunch of places and things to do, it’s really powerful. It’s not serendipity, it’s [about telling you] these are roughly some of the places you would be interested in and these are some of the reasons.”

Barouch notes that Facebook, too, moved into local search recently with the launch of Nearby. “But I don’t think anyone’s really figured out local yet – everyone’s coming at it from different angles,” he says.

Since the iPad app isn’t yet live, we asked Barouch to put together a little demo so others can also see the Google Maps SDK in action. That video is below.

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Instagram Sees A Drop Of 4M Daily Active Users Over Christmas, But The Terms Of Service Kerfuffle May Not Be To Blame

Sure, it’s not unlike the New York Post be sensationalist, but, because it is a quiet-ish news week between Christmas and New Year, I am taking a story it published today on a drop in Instagram users with a little more than a grain of salt.

Basically, it notes that figures from AppData demonstrate that Instagram lost 4 million daily active users — nearly a 25% drop to 12.4 million from 16.4 million — between December 19 and December 26. And as the NYP terms it, people are walking away in a “Rage against rules” because of Instagram’s new, more commercially-minded terms of service — which it rolled back on December 21, i.e., in the middle of its DAU decline, in response to public outcry.

Now, I should point out that I personally really like Instagram, both as a way to post my own pictures, but also as a way of viewing those by others. But I’m no apologist, either. So here are some further observations that give a slightly bigger picture about what is going on:

– Yes, AppData notes that Instagram lost 4 million DAUs over the holiday period, as based on Facebook logins via the app. But it’s also seen some gains (according to the same data): weekly active users in that period are up by 1 million (currently at 28.5 million), and monthly active users are up by 1.1 million (currently at 43 million). DAUs also seem to be up a bit since Christmas, and it’s now down by 3.5 million over the last 7 days.

– There are other photo apps that have seen fluctuations in DAUs and MAUs in the last week. Look at Hipstamatic, or Snapseed, or Flickr, whose well-timed launch made some people wonder whether it could replace Instagram.

– The NYP story compares this to Thanksgiving, which was rich pickins for Instagram. Then it celebrated record postings as people rushed to snap their turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. But this time around, the Christmas Poke effect may be at work:

As Josh pointed out in reference to stories of how another photo app from Facebook, Poke, is slipping after an initial burst of interest, people who would have received new iOS devices will be downloading essential apps this week rather than the second wave of nice-to-have apps. The same could apply to apps like Instagram — not just on iOS but Android as well.

– A week and a half ago, we published some data looking at whether Instagram traffic had dropped off as a result of the removal of preview “cards” on Twitter. The answer: yes, traffic went down from Twitter, but Instagram traffic itself appeared to be holding up, at least at that point.

In that post, I noted that any decline could have to do with Twitter, but could also be related to hullabaloo over terms of service; or even a newer version of the app that appears to be getting worse ratings than older versions. The same applies here.

In short, there are a number of reasons for a decline in daily active users at Instagram (some alarming, some seasonal). Yes, it may be that people are voting with their fingers, and if that’s the case it will likely be something that Facebook and Instagram will have to consider as they think of how to make money with the app.  But to associate it right now with, say, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber’s proclivities — as crucial as they are to my own personal sense of what’s important in the world — smells off.

(And yes, I’ve reached out to Instagram, Kevin Systrom and AppData for further clarification. Happy Holidays.)

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Raspberry Pi Hack Turns The Ultra-Affordable Computer Into An AirPlay Receiver

What can’t the Raspberry Pi do? Well, it definitely can operate as an AirPlay receiver for Apple’s Wi-Fi audio streaming protocol, it turns out. Cambridge engineering student Jordan Burgess managed to convert one of the $25 open computer into an AirPlay receiver along the lines of Apple’s AirPort Express, using open source software, a USB Wi-Fi adapter, SD card, micro USB cable and the Pi itself.

The process for setting up the Pi once you have all the hardware ingredients is fairly simple, especially if you’re comfortable working with Terminal and with the basics of installing an operating system onto the Raspberry Pi. Still, this isn’t for users who aren’t comfortable outside of their computer’s standard GUI. But if you’ve got the time and the skills, you can save a fair amount using this version vs. others. Burgess estimates that the total build cost is around £30 ($48 U.S.), vs. $100 for the Apple TV or AirPort Express. Speakers with the tech built-in also cost well in excess of that on average.

There are some caveats, however, and the biggest may turn off audio quality enthusiasts hoping to set some of these up and running in their own homes. Burgess notes that the Raspberry Pi lacks a good digital-to-analog converter (DAC), meaning that you’ll get background noise and distortion when you plug the Pi directly into the 3.5mm output of a set of speakers. A USB sound card is a possible fix for this limitation, however, and some home theater receivers act as DACs if you’re using it as a way to add AirPlay functionality cheaply to your existing living or media room setup.

With a few more refinements to help increase audio quality, this could be a cheap way to help wire an entire house for sound, Sonos-style, so long as you’re already committed to using Apple devices and iTunes.

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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Stuck For New Year’s Eve In London? Yplan Takes Last-minute Booking Mobile

With over 5 million Twitter followers, UK actor/author Stephen Fry is the closest thing we get to an “Ashton Kutcher”, given that he has a big following and occasionally takes an interest in tech startups (sometimes a financial interest). But his choices are hit and miss. One was a startup which allowed you to put virtual post-it notes on web sites… But his picks have improved and recently Yplan, a VC-backed startup with real execution credentials, benefitted from his largesse. Like HotelTonight, Yplan [iTunes link] is a way to book events (like plays, shows and concerts) via iOS mobile with literally a couple clicks. And it’s going to come in handy for New Year’s Eve and other holiday events in the UK capital.

Founded by Viktoras Jucikas and Rytis Vitkauskas, YPlan provides handpicked London highlights and an ability to then book them, drawing on a team with experience at Time Out, toptable, Songkick and lastminute.com.

The smartphone app has already garnered $1.7 million (£1.06 million) from Wellington Partners and Octopus Investments and is very much part of this new wave of “effortless transactions” on mobile. Taxi apps like Uber and Hailo in London are educating user to the idea of a simple app, with credit card details plugged in, that can literally make your life easier.

In the US, there is WillCall, currently only available in SF. It”s a talented, small team and does web/mobile and general ticketing but tends to focus on gigs and theatre, rather than YPlan’s full range of events. There is also ScoreBIG, but it focuses only on sports.

Of course, Yplan’s ‘competitors’ are myriad. Time Out, for one. But the latter is an editorial business, not transactional, and mobile and bookings are an after-thought. Ticketmaster stops selling tickets online 24-48hrs before a show starts, so it’s not set up for the last minute ticket market which is pretty big in a city like London. It’s also not really a mobile business. And whereas Groupon is focused on 50%+ discounts, their mobile offering has been still born.

Yplan’s other backers include Lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman, Sherry Coutu (advisory board member at LinkedIn), Songkick’s Peter Read and Andy Philips of booking.com, Tom Hulme (IDEO), Gi Fernando (Techlightenment) and Robert Linney (Chemical Brothers) and Baltcap, a VC fund directed at the Baltic region.

Reference: MobileGames.vn

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