Hilarious iPhone app, joke or no? | Hacker News Reader

Hilarious iPhone app, joke or no?

girlfriendapp.com

18 pointstrader12 comments

Definitely a joke. Check the testimonials:

"My first three wives divorced me because I always forgot anniversaries. I am pretty sure my fourth marriage will work thanks to the Girlfriend app?" Mark, 22

22 yr old who's been married 4 times? ;)

"I just drove by a brown barn and it reminded me of your eyes."

Etc...

Not a joke:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftwa...

(I'm assuming by "joke" you meant "not a real app.")

What I want is an ex-girlfriend tracker that will tell me when she updates her Facebook photo so I can see what the new guy looks like.

So you want the news feed?

A friend of mine always dreamed of having a similar app, but where you could keep track of multiple girlfriends. More importantly, you could select in the app which one of them you were with at any given time, which would remove any trace of the others from the contacts, texts, and recently called list.

That would be worth 99 cents...

I like the sound of this. I know it sounds silly and, really, you shouldn't need this when you're starting off a relationship, but I often forget to make these sort of little communications efforts with my wife and it'd be cool to be reminded of them.. so "Wife Keeper" might be better, lol :)

Now an app that let me take the grunt work out of managing multiple girlfriends might be worth some money.

We're half way there, but it's missing the automated messaging aspects of girlfriendapp. I wonder how girlfriendapp displays who the messages are from, AFAIK the SDK doesn't allow for tight integration with SMS. Nevertheless, ideas are stirring for future features. :)

http://blackbookexclusive.com

disclaimer: my app.

Just out of interest, how would you justify the $4.99 price tag? It seems unusually high.

Lots of reasons and I'd be happy to share.

1. I'm from the advertising industry. There's a reason Prada sells jeans for $300 and Old Navy's are $30, and we're not targeting Old Navy shoppers with this app.

2. I believe we're selling a rather niche product, therefore $.99 is simply unsustainable at the type of volume us and the other BB's are sold. We also increased the price by $1 with the release of 2.0, and we have plans for addressing the $.99-1.99 market.

3. Utility vs. Disposability. Most $.99 games (though often amazing) last about 30 days or less. We offer a product that we hope you'll use for much, much longer than that.

4. We're the Rolls Royce of black books from a design perspective, and outselling 3 competitors priced at $2.99, 1.99, and .99. We lack a few features to be able to claim total feat. domination, but we do have a few unique ones of our own.

5. We offer anonymous relationship advice and pricing it at .99 opens the door for all kinds of nasty UGC that drives away advertisers.

So in short, think about your product and market thoroughly before you set a price and don't give in simply because "everyone is pricing to $.99". As the AppStore continues to grow rapidly, $.99 doesn't leave much room for marketing expenditures either.

Here's a feature I'd absolutely love: a button that brings me to a simple screen that she can use to input her own phone number when I hand her the phone. It's a pain to try that with the current Contacts interface. After she hits enter, there should be a "Take a Photo?" button that pops up.

You mean... First Impression? Check. :)

http://blackbookexclusive.com/images/slider/little-black-boo...

Hit plus button on cover to trigger it so you don't have to login. I timed it versus the traditional Address Book and it's about twice as fast to enter a contact.

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