Tiny Australian startup gets 250,000 downloads of its app in just 4 days | Hacker News Reader

Tiny Australian startup gets 250,000 downloads of its app in just 4 days

discovr.info

55 pointsdiscovr18 comments

Full text of the page in case it's down:

Just over a month ago we launched our new app Discovr Apps to help you find apps for your iPhone and iPad. Everything has gone really well and we’re very excited to announce some of our most recent stats:

* In the last 4 days alone, Discovr Apps has had more than a quarter of a million new downloads (256,719 downloads in 4 days).

* In the same 4 day period we’ve served more than 4.8 million requests in the app, averaging more than 1 million requests per day.

* On a single day in that period, our users spent the equivalent total time of 9 months and 1 day using the app.

* Discovr Apps also went straight to #1 app in 17 countries including the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and Germany.

* We’ve released three updates in the 6 weeks since launch, and we’re very fortunate to have an average App Store rating of 4.5 stars.

* We’ve also seen an entirely new business model emerge in the last few weeks, with lots of developers wanting to advertise in the app.

All in all, we’re completely blown away by the response. We’re a small team based in Perth, Australia, and we just can’t believe it.

Thankyou so much to everyone who has had fun with the app. We’re just getting started. Get in touch to tell us what you want to see next!

The Filter Squad Team Stu, Matt, Tamas, Ben, and Dave

Perhaps not as easy as it used to be, it's always encouraging to see that there are still apps in the app store that can pull huge numbers on release.

On a side note, I wonder which Lodsys patent this one violates? :)

Looks like they built on AWS to achieve that scale. Pretty cool.

http://discovr.info/2011/07/scaling-a-rails-webservice-on-aw...

I'd be very interested in knowing what the team did prior to launch in terms of marketing / viral / PR strategy to get these numbers. Impressive!

Apparently nothing. They printed some stickers and hoodies and that's it (according to the blog post, anyway).

Some simple Googling gives me lots of articles on LifeHacker, Techcrunch, Mashable, etc. It's clear they reached out to PR months before the release.

This is an interesting point, especially considering they specifically mentioned their lack of a marketing plan. Somebody got on the phone/plane at some point, or otherwise utilized existing connections. I took a screenshot[1] of the results (it appears they launched in mid-June), and most startups I've seen will kill for that kind of covdedrage.

[1]http://i51.tinypic.com/2d7bqcj.png

Are they profiting from this App in some way? Not to be a debbie downer, but surely for an App this popular they must have a plan to reap some financial benefit, but i didnt see one in action?

I'm sure they earn money through the iTunes affiliate program.

From the post:

" We’ve also seen an entirely new business model emerge in the last few weeks, with lots of developers wanting to advertise in the app."

More info on rankings history and such:
http://appshopper.com/entertainment/discovr-apps-discover-ne...
Wonder why they went free a week ago.

When did they go #1 in the US? I don't see that at all.

Yeah, I noticed that but technically the charts only go 30 days back, so it's theoretically possible they hit #1 at some point. Although doubtful since it was a paid app then.

What is the criteria for ranking #1? Is it just a daily ranking for total # of downloads that day or what?

Apple doesn't say. They tweaked the ranking algorithm recently though, to include usage in addition to downloads.

where did you hear this? As far as I know top paid is still total # of downloads over a 3-4 day period.

Maybe they only tweaked the free?

my apps are currently ranked #2 and #4 in their respective categories but looking at usage stats I highly highly doubt that is factored in. Seems to be downloads only.

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