How Twitter Got an App Store: The Oneforty Story
xconomy.com
xconomy.com
Maybe there is some added value that I don't see. But, really, it looks a lot like Yelp, GetSatisfaction, or Ripoff Report: they create this big community focused on saying stuff about your app and it ends up costing you if you participate (in $$$) or if you don't (in customers).
Twitter already has an incredibly effective app-discovery mechanism: the "from AppName" that appears on every tweet on the website. And, that mechanism is 100% free (for now). I don't really see how oneforty improves upon that.
Twitter app development is kind of a no-mans-land right now. Any day, Twitter can change the cost model of developing apps for their platform. Recently, Twitter just made app development much more expensive (in manhours) by adding features that are fairly complicated to implement. In the future it seems likely they will ask for some direct financial consideration too--e.g. charging for use of their trademarks and/or charging for increased API rate limits. So there's a lot of risk from the cost side, because you don't know how much it is going to cost to develop & maintain the app.
Plus, there is the problem that 30% of 0 is zero while 30% of $1.00 is far from zero. These AppStore taxes hurt people who charge money for their apps and help the people who don't. In fact, the people who charge money end up subsidizing their own competition in a not-so-indirect way.
Now, maybe Oneforty has some plans to add value that is worth more than the value they are taking from app developers. But, reading through the material they present, I haven't seen it. I sincerely hope that they come up with a business model that is a net benefit to themselves and to app developers. But, until then, It seems less risky for (commercial) app developers to nicely ask Oneforty to pull their apps' listings from the site.
In the long term, I think Amazon, PayPal, and mobile carrier payment mechanisms will work well for selling direct to customers. Amazon and PayPal charge less than 10% per transaction. I think in a couple of years, mobile carriers will be charging ~10% (like the Japanese carriers do). Once this happens 70%/30% will seem ridiculous and will only be tolerated for platforms that give developers no alternative, like the iPhone.
In regards to the payment, i just meant that if oneforty offers the payment (presumably via Amazon or Paypal) the developer has less to worry about. I understand that this will only work if rates are not much higher than through those payment providers directly.