“The biggest impact for marketers will be LTE support. This will dramatically increase internet speeds and result in the ability to create much more engaging app experiences,”

As you may have heard by now, last week, Apple acquired Chomp – an app discovery engine. This strategic move will play a crucial role in Apple’s effort to renovate the App Store, particularly in search. TechCrunch reported the story first, stating, “investors should be very pleased with the outcome.” Since then, numerous other sources have estimated the deal to be in the ballpark of $50 million. After a record year in sales, Apple is sitting on about $100 billion in cash however they don’t generally put much emphasis on making acquisitions – this one is suspected to be a symbolic jab at Android. We’ll revisit that later. Other improvements we expect include; increased speed, interactivity, and a simpler design.

What does this mean for iOS users?

I think it’s fair to say that most of us with iOS devices have browsed the App Store at one point or another and failed to locate the app we were looking. As a result, we either left the store empty handed – so to speak, some resorted to Google for further research, and others probably skipped over to the Top 25 and found a different app. Regardless of the outcome a clear problem exists.

In all fairness, Apple isn’t a search company. They are certainly familiar with search but it’s not their forte and with the number of available apps exploding from 15,000 in January 2009, to over 575,000 today, they have been quite busy riding the wave but the time has come for an upgrade in the discovery process. This problem is not breaking news, in fact, in January 2009 when the App Store was merely a toddler, 300,000 users downloaded Chomp – indicating they wanted better results. Still today, if you search “arcade games” in the App Store your search will retrieve a list of games that either include “arcade” in their titles or descriptions. If you perform the same search in Chomp you will receive a completely different list of games that is much more relevant – for instance, actual arcade games!

What does this mean for game developers?

As a developer, you should feel giddy about this acquisition! Most app developers have been waiting (impatiently) for such an upgrade because this means their apps have a better chance of reaching the users who want to use them. For a long time app developers and app promoters alike have universally recommended that Apple improve its ranking algorithms and search results for discovering apps. Apple’s current systems are archaic relative to how content discovery works on other popular platforms, relying on velocity of downloads and verbatim keyword matches. With improved rankings, the true value of user acquisition can be accepted by Apple and given their proper placement. In attempt to temporarily fix the issue, Apple launched Genius – a feature that suggests apps to users based on their current apps and the apps used by others with similar tastes. Although the intention was good, Genius required extra work for the user and thereby never made a big enough splash for developers to pay attention.

Other Chomp headlines

Chomp and Verizon reached a deal last September in which Chomp agreed to power search for Verizon’s app store (Venture Beat). Although for Android, the motive behind Verizon’s deal was similar to Apple’s – they too wanted to improve app discovery for users! As of today, Chomp is still available as a standalone app on both iOS and Android, as well as the Verizon app store but their futures are in question. Traditionally after acquisitions, Apple has shut down services on competing platforms and implemented them exclusively on their own products. It isn’t official but I would expect them to do the same in this case, living up to Steve Jobs’ vow to “spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.” In other words, they’re looking for ways to crush the Android.

The big question is will it work?

It’s certain that if you are an iOS user you can expect improved discovery in the near future. Android users may also get an upgrade but I wouldn’t expect the solution to be Chomp, even if you are on Verizon’s network. In my opinion, Chomp does not have any reason to fail unless it is isolated like Genius. To make this venture with Chomp successful Apple needs to avoid branding the Chomp experience as an added feature that requires extra learning. Instead, they should simply build the technology into the natural search process and alert users that the process has changed. From there better search results, rankings, and features will take care of the rest.

As app promoters we are very pleased to see Apple make this move. In September 2011, we published a study that proved incentivized traffic can be more valuable than organic – you can read the full report here. A better app discovery process will better reward promoters who have the ability to focus on quality as well as velocity, whereas today’s App Store emphasizes velocity.

Kicking off our period of industry reflection on what happened in 2011 and what might happen in 2012 is Rob Weber, senior VP and co-founder of W3i.

The US company is an iOS and Android app discovery and distribution outfit, which works with developers and publishers to launch and promote free games and apps.

PocketGamer: What do you think was the most significant event for the mobile games industry in 2011?
Rob Weber: Over the long term, I think we’ll look back at Amazon’s launch of its first Android-powered device, the Kindle Fire, as the most disruptive event that occurred in 2011 for mobile gaming.
Why? It signifies the first credible threat to the iPad for tablet market share, and it presents a massive future opportunity for game developers given how many credit cards Amazon has on file.

What was the most significant event for your company?
AppX, the $10 million cash extension of our Recharge Studio fund for accelerating the growth of mobile social games.

What was your favourite mobile game of the year?
I love what our partner Appy has done with SpellCraft School of Magic for iOS. It’s taken the freemium model and made it fun, and also brought a more RPG-style game to the masses by utilising wizards, spells, etc.
As for a game we haven’t been involved with, that’s hard since 16 of the top 25 grossing iOS apps are currently partners. I suppose I’d have to say Halfbrick Studio’s Jetpack Joyride.

What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2012?
One trend that will start to have a real impact on mobile game developers’ bottom-line for 2012 will be the widespread adoption of cheap Android tablets, led by the Kindle Fire.

What’s your New Year’s resolution and what resolution would you enforce on the industry?
My New Year’s resolution would be to start playing more games on my Android phone. I still spend almost 100 percent of my time playing games on iOS devices.
The resolution I would enforce on the industry is to stop over-hyping things, and start getting back to the basics of what really drives long-term business growth.

My day job brings me the good fortune of working with the majority of the top-grossing app developers. For the AppNation conference in San Francisco earlier this month, I was asked to organize and moderate a panel, “Rants From Top Grossing App Developers.” The panel consisted of Giordano Bruno Contestabile (EA/PopCap Games), Cat Silvestre (DeNA/ngmoco), Daniel Pfeiffer (FunMobility), Jamil Moledina (Funzio), and me.

Rants from top-grossing developers might seem odd. As Jamil pointed out, why would a top-grossing app developer complain since it is, by definition, generating the most revenue? Therefore, included in my highlights are a few anti-rants.

Mirage of cross-platform. Giordano pointed out that the promise of cross-platform app development was talked about for 10 years, and we are still not there yet. From Jamil’s perspective, we are seeing some progress as interfaces and monetization solutions are becoming more consistent across platforms.

Fragmentation is still an issue. From their experience working with feature phone apps pre-iPhone, Giordano and Cat both agreed that fragmentation issues have subsided a bit. With that said, fragmentation issues are still prevalent, and we aren’t just talking Android. During Funzio’s recently released hit iOS game, Modern War, Jamil said his team spent several sleepless nights working through fragmentation issues with older iPod touch devices.

People problems caused by the bubble. Daniel said it’s difficult to hire good talent at a reasonable price due to unrealistic expectations versus the value and impact an employee brings to an organization. From my perspective, the trouble with talent acquisition largely stems from so many venture-funded mobile app companies. I’m reminded of the dot-com bubble, and how that impacted the early growth of my company. Daniel believes that a lot of dumb money is pouring into inexperienced startups with thoroughly unprofitable app concepts. Jamil disagrees, however, that we’re in a bubble. He believes investments are generally rational given how big the mobile app space will be. From a hiring perspective, Jamil said the problem is not just hiring developers. The greatest issue, he said, is hiring top-notch artists.

Randomness of smartphone store policies. Daniel expressed frustration over the randomness of smartphone store operators’ policies including their procedures and enforcement thereof. For example, Daniel cited the recent approval by Apple of Big Fish’s use of subscription billing in a game, which was only days later rejected. Also, Apple forbade the use of incentivized app downloads in April 2011, even though our company’s research shows that users who receive incentives can be highly engaged.

More intelligent ways to drive user acquisition are needed. While pleased they can generally target by country, Jamil would like to see mobile ad networks support demographic targeting.

Got a rant or anti-rant of your own? Please share in the comments.

Everyone agrees that apps are great marketing tools for engaging consumers. Now the debate is whether to develop native or web apps. Which is better? Well, it depends.

What Are Native Apps, Web Apps, and Hybrid Apps?

Native apps are apps that are explicitly developed and stored on a device. Native apps require installation.

Web apps are written entirely with web technologies and the code is executed by the browser; installation is optional.

Hybrid apps are native apps with embedded HTML. They have most of the benefits of native apps. The web portions can be packed with the app or downloaded from the web.

Factor 1: How Will the Consumer Use the App?

If the app uses features of the device (microphone, speaker, camera, vibration, GPS, etc.), a native app is more appropriate. If the app relies on the Internet for content (i.e., a catalog of products), a web app is more appropriate. This chart demonstrates applications by Internet task – shopping and search apps being heavy browser users are more likely to be web apps while connecting and navigating apps use features of the device and are more likely to be native apps.

Factor 2: How Fast and How User Friendly Do You Want the App?

Since a native app is explicitly downloaded and stored on the device, generally the user experience is better. The user interface can be cleaner without multiple frames. As Matt Legend Gemmell said when speaking about native apps in his article “Apps vs the Web,” “…humans are designed to focus the majority of our attention on a single task at a time. Interfaces which permit and even encourage this separation of concerns reduce our stress level, and facilitate concentration.” Native apps tend to have better graphics and a smooth user experience due to the interface with the device.

Factor 3: How Will the App Be Distributed?

Native apps can be distributed for free through app stores using their payment system. However, a negative is the loss of control through the approval process, monetization, and promotion of the app. Web apps generally have less visibility and are usually marketed using search engines or on branded websites directly to the consumer.

Factor 4: What Do You Want to Spend?

Native apps are more expensive to develop, as they need to be developed for each specific operating system – iOS, Android (multiple devices), Windows, etc. Many web apps can be developed by in-house developers using existing skills. Therefore, native apps can also take longer to develop. Maintaining apps on multiple operating systems is also expensive and time consuming.

Of course, you can always use the hybrid model, which can combine the best of both worlds. Hybrid applications are increasingly rising in popularity as operating systems become more fragmented.

Usage, user experience, control, distribution, and cost all come into play when developing an app; and then there is how to design the app itself so that it is engaging and retains the user to defray distribution costs.

To learn more, watch this great presentation entitled “HTML5, Hybrid or Native Mobile App Development Webinar.”

Optimizing Images for Huge Performance Improvements

It is very important to test and optimize images. Our game investment company, Recharge Studios recently optimized an image in My Pet Zombie that increased the click-through rate (CTR) from 6.6 percent to 32 percent. Just by testing and optimizing the creative, 4.8 times more users clicked the image.

Read the full post here

Android devices are more customizable and, therefore, more complicated to use, lacking the elegant interface of iOS apps. They are also generally less expensive, thus becoming more mainstream – especially in global markets. Google operates in a much more open environment, making it easier on the developer but causing some chaos in the marketplace. For example, developers can use multiple billing systems, making it more difficult for a user to purchase an app and causing lower conversions for app developers utilizing premium billing or in-app purchasing. They also have ad-hoc quality control for apps with minimal central vetting, creating a confusing marketplace and major piracy problems. In a recent article, my company reported that premium developers are seeing 100 pirated app installs for every one legitimate paid app install. For developers, app development and porting can be more difficult due to the fragmentation of devices, while device manufacturers can turn off features, adding additional complexity.

Key Points About User Acquisition on Android

1. Android Market is not as influential as Apple’s App Store in app discovery by users, so strategies to rank high are not as impactful. Also, the Android Market handles rankings a bit differently than iOS, causing bursting campaigns to be less impactful.
2. In addition to Android Market, app developers should consider taking the time to publish their apps in key third-party app stores, like Amazon’s Appstore and SlideME. These third-party app stores will often offer favorable terms to entice developers, creating another meaningful alternative user acquisition channel.
3. Similar to iOS, third-party ad networks, especially those focused on apps, perform well to drive user acquisition. Since payment-based business models are not performing as well for app developers, there is an even greater supply of ad inventory, which is driving down the rates versus iOS. Expect the cost to acquire a user to be less on Android.
4. Carrier and handset partner deals. It is reported that Google is sharing advertising revenue with carriers and handset partners that use Android.

Android Demographics

Android users skew male at 73 percent compared to 57 percent on the iPhone and 54 percent on the iPod touch, according to a chart by AdMob.

Additionally, Mobile Mix shows 65 percent of impressions on connected devices are on smartphones, 18 percent are on connected devices, and 17 percent are on feature phones. Of the smartphone OS Mix, 54 percent were Android, 26 percent were iOS, 15 percent were RIM, and 5 percent were other.

The more you know about the device and platform, the more effective you will be in promoting your app. The smartphone market is changing rapidly, so it pays to do your research and adapt your user acquisition strategy based upon the audience you are targeting.

The smartphone war is heating up, and although it is still unclear where Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Web OS will eventually fit into the crowded mobile operating system market, it is very clear that iOS and Android are the market share leaders.

Gartner reports that Google and Apple are the “obvious winners” in the smartphone category. The combined share of iOS and Android doubled to nearly 62 percent in Q2 2011, up from just over 31 percent in the same quarter last year. Google’s mobile operating system now accounts for 43.4 percent of all smartphone sales, up from 17.2 percent in Q2 2010; and Apple reached 18.2 percent, up from 14.1 percent at the same time.

IOS devices have a hands-down great user experience, but at a higher price. With elegant style and the best integrated hardware and software, iOS devices are the simplest to operate. Apple oversees a more regulated, closed environment than Google. This creates positives and negatives. For example, users can only buy apps through the App Store, making the transaction more streamlined and thus driving significantly higher conversion rates for premium billing or in-app purchasing because Apple has so many credit cards on file. Apple also regulates the apps that are listed in the App Store based upon its App Store Review Guidelines, making it problematic for some new apps to get published, as they must play by Apple’s rules. To complicate things even more, Apple’s rules are not always black and white and are subject to Apple’s evolving interpretation.

Key Points About User Acquisition on iOS

1. Because of the reliance on a centralized App Store for all user acquisition, it is important to rank high overall or in your category for driving organic traffic.
2. Popularity also impacts where you rank in search results, another driver of organic traffic.
3. Editorial features in iTunes can drive significant installs. “The only promotion we’ve found to be consistently effective in driving paid downloads has been promotion via iTunes, either as a ‘Staff Favorite’ or a ‘New & Noteworthy’ selection on iTunes itself. The reasons and process by which Apple makes these selections are a mystery to us, but we have found it useful to always consider Apple’s interests when positioning a new product,” said Paul O’Connor, brand director, Appy Entertainment, developer of Trucks and Skulls, FaceFighter, and Tune Runner, all featured in iTunes.
4. Unlike Android, carriers have little impact on user acquisition on iOS.
5. Third-party ad networks, especially those focused on apps, perform well to drive user acquisition. Seek performance-based campaigns, whether CPC or CPI, with these networks. Be mindful of limitations in behavioral ad targeting.
6. The social impact on user acquisition for apps (i.e., the viral coefficient) is not as strong in iOS as it is for Facebook, but one marketer at a leading social game recently told me that they get a 3/10 viral coefficient (i.e., for every 10 new users they acquired outside of social means, they get their audience to incite three more users to play with them). I would speculate that Zynga’s Words With Friends has a much higher coefficient than the average on iOS. Read more about “How Mobile is Getting More Social.”

iOS Demographics

Possibly because of the higher price of devices, iPhones skew to higher income users.

Many app developers ask me for my perspective on how to develop and scale a profitable user acquisition strategy for their app. One of the primary gaps in knowledge I see from app developers is a clear understanding of how the operating system impacts user acquisition.

As the first post in a two-part series, we’ll explore how the iOS operating system impacts user acquisition for apps. For the second post, we’ll focus on how the Android operating system impacts user acquisition for apps.

How Differences in Smartphone Operating Systems Impact App Promotion

Smartphones as a whole skew to a younger audience – 18 to 34.

IPhone users buy more paid apps – half of them buy at least one per month – compared with 21 percent of Android users and 35 percent of iPod touch users.

IPhone users are the most loyal at 91 percent, iPod touch at 88 percent, and Android at 84 percent.

As far as mobile ads, the average click-through rate (CTR) is 0.52 percent. IPhone users are by far more willing to click on ads, with an average CTR of 0.78 percent, while Android users are at 0.47 percent.

IPod touch skews to a young audience – 65 percent are 17 and younger, according to a chart from AdMob.

IPod touch users love their apps – especially free apps, downloading an average of 12 apps a month – 37 percent more apps than iPhone and Android users. They also spend more time using them: 100 minutes a day.

For the second post, we’ll focus on how the Android operating system impacts user acquisition for apps.

Behavioral targeting adds value to the return on advertising by identifying relevant users for advertisers and making the spend more effective. Due to the complexity of mobile devices, mobile ad targeting is not as advanced as web advertising. Finding ad inventory to reach users with specific behavioral characteristics can be a major challenge. And the more complex the criteria, the more limited and costly the inventory becomes.

Gartner predicts that mobile ads will generate around $3.3 billion worldwide in 2011, doubling the $1.6 billion the industry took in during 2010. “As the adoption of smartphones and media tablets extends to more consumers, the audience for mobile advertising will increase and become easier to segment and target, driving the growth of mobile advertising spend for brands and advertisers,” comments Andrew Frank, research vice president at Gartner. “We expect that targeting and contextualization, especially in social sites and applications, will carry on improving throughout the forecast period and beyond.”

Why Is Behavioral Targeting Important?

Behavioral targeting is important so advertisers can reach the target audience interested in their offer and most likely to convert. The cost of targeted advertising is more expensive but by reaching the most relevant audience, the ad spend is also more effective. Reaching just the relevant audience is also a better user experience as users are now being inundated with ads in which they have no interest causing them to “zone” out advertising.

Mobile advertising is in a similar place that online advertising was five years ago before ad networks, ad exchanges, and ad platforms evolved to incorporate behavioral targeting. The business that delivers targeting beyond the basics will capture the largest market share of mobile advertising as advertisers are demanding a relevant audience. A Pubmatic study released in March, 2011, showed:

Audience Targeting continues to grow: 97 percent of advertisers will leverage anonymous audience targeting in 2011, and 47 percent will have more than half of their online advertising budgets dedicated to campaigns that include audience targeting with user level attributes.

Why Is Mobile Ad Targeting so Difficult

Online behavioral targeting is possible by setting a cookie on users’ computers, thus identifying attributes about that computer user. By default Apple’s iOS rejects third-party cookies, making it difficult to track the user on any iOS device. In contrast, Google’s Android supports cookies and the ability to interface with browsers.

Google’s AdMob currently has a 52 percent reach in mobile advertising with somewhat a monopoly on user data but mobile ad networks and platforms are making headway. Graham Mosley, VP, platform solutions of Mocean Mobile, reports that they reach about 60 percent of smartphones globally and many networks have more than 70 percent global reach. Depending on the network, through Mocean Mobile, marketers can reach more than 50 percent of smartphone users in the United States.

“Many clients are relying on standard targeting parameters such as device, carrier, and hyper-local geo (lat/long). Some publishers’ ad servers can leverage private data sets, but cookie and privacy challenges hinder the growth of cross-publisher audience based buys at this point,” comments Graham. When ad networks gain mass access, behavioral targeting will be more precise than online behavioral targeting as identifying a users’ device ID is more personal. But, it opens another can of worms in consumer privacy particularly due to the lack of the user having the ability to “opt-out.”

However, neither Google nor Apple is offering effective behavioral targeting at this point. Rachel Pasqua summed up the dilemma of brand marketers: “Digital fingerprinting is exciting given its ability to track behavioral and demographic data across multiple devices for single users. The targeting it supports far surpasses cookies, and consumer awareness (i.e., propensity to opt out) is still quite low. But any brand that uses this technology now without full disclosure to their customers is risking a huge backlash down the road,” she writes in a recent blog post, “Time to Fix Mobile Targeting.” Many users believe behavioral targeting is an invasion of privacy, and the Federal Trade Commission continues to get bombarded by advocates who want to curtail the collection of behavioral data.)

A Gallup poll, published in December 2010, found that 61 percent of Internet users said that tracking is not justified even if the practice makes it possible to offer web sites for free and 37 percent of respondents said they would opt out of all online ad targeting if they could.

What’s on the Horizon – Spacial and Temporal Relevance

What if you could identify the mobile user with the intent to buy that is in a location where they can actually make a purchase? Retailers salivate over this kind of information. AdNext is incorporating spacial and temporal relevance in ads by predicting a user’s next place to visit. AdNext clients collect the user place visit history, which through Wi-Fi fingerprints the user as she visits one place in the commercial complex and another. The client then sends this information to the AdNext server, which sends the relevant ad to the user after building a prediction model from the visit history. By processing more and more data the model becomes better able to predict correlations of behaviors. As complicated as this sounds, it is happening at the COEX Mall, the largest commercial complex in South Korea.

Behavioral targeting for mobile advertisers will continue to evolve just like it did with online advertising. When it does, more advertising dollars will pour into mobile taking advantage of its portable characteristics. In the meantime mass mobile ad networks continue to evolve while niche mobile ad networks thrive, providing access to highly targeted audiences like smartphone app game enthusiasts. The race is on for advertisers to find the best behavioral targeting solution.

Mobile is getting more social. Let’s take a look how that’s playing out on Facebook, Twitter, and game app platforms.

Facebook

Facebook, which took over the web with single sign-on, is now trying to conquer mobile. Facebook announced its single sign-on for mobile on Nov. 3, 2010. Single sign-on (SSO) allows users to sign on to third-party apps and services using their Facebook credentials. This reduces the amount of time required by a user to register on mobile devices; this results in higher conversion rates with an abundance of additional user information. “It takes you quickly from the stuff you have to do, to the stuff you want to do,” says Eric Tseng, VP of mobile at Facebook. “Single sign-on can be enabled with just a few lines of code,” he adds. (Here’s a Facebook resource for developers.)

Features include allowing the developer access to a list of a user’s friends, and providing users with an easy way to post on their wall to share with friends. In mobile, Facebook, owns and monitors a user’s friends list, similar to the web. Developers can access the list via Facebook once a user signs in via their app. With single sign-on, you can also ask for permission to send an email. This is a great way for marketers to get email access to their users connecting on mobile devices.

Unlike the deep native iOS Twitter integration recently announced (see below), Apple pulled plans for native Facebook integration late last year citing Facebook’s “onerous” terms. Specifically, Apple was planning to integrate Facebook in Ping, Apple’s new music-focused social networking service. Ping launched in September without Facebook making it more difficult to connect with friends and share music preferences. Only time will tell if Apple and Facebook will develop a deeper partnership.

Flixster is an example of a successful mobile app using Facebook SSO. Flixster’s social element encourages the sharing of reviews and movie “Wants to See” list with friends. This is a popular iOS app, and oddly enough, I only had one person on my Facebook friends’ list that used their servie, and that was my brother, Aaron Weber, the founder of Inveni, a site similar to Flixster.

Groupon was one of the first apps to integrate Facebook’s SSO. Groupon owes much of its tremendous growth to marketing through low-cost Facebook ads when the inventory was cheap, as Facebook was an ideal marketing vehicle to reach 18-to-34 year-old women with college degrees. Now Groupon is making it easy for users to take advantage of its offers through Facebook’s single sign-on and using the “Share This Deal” and “Post to Your Wall” function to capitalize further on social for continued hyper growth

Companies such as Zynga and Popcap Games, which already have valuable applications for their users on the web version of Facebook, will find single sign-on to be very effective in mobile too. For example, in a recent post, “How Popcap Games Cracked the Code for Cross-Platform Synchronization with Bejeweled Blitz,” I walk through how PopCap Games leveraged SSO in Bejeweled Blitz to make it easy for game players to compete with friends wherever they were, using whatever device they choose. In fact, PopCap has done so well, it is rumored to be in the final stages of selling for $1 billion at the time I am writing this post.

Twitter

Could Twitter be an alternative sign-on network to Facebook? Apple thinks so. At the recent WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple announced native Twitter integration via iOS 5; it’s due out later this fall. This will allow users to sign in to their Twitter account once in their device settings and then tweet with a single tap from Twitter-enabled apps, including Apple’s camera, photos, Safari, contacts, YouTube, and maps. Developers can easily take advantage of the single sign-on capability, letting users tweet directly from their apps too.

Game App Platforms

Game app developers are very innovative. Keep an eye on top game platform providers, even if you are in another category, to stay ahead of the curve.

Most experts in mobile social gaming are aware of DeNA’s pending U.S. launch of Mobage, Gree’s recent acquisition of OpenFeint, and RIM’s recent acquisition of Scoreloop. The major players are putting up significant cash for a lot of anonymous social connections that don’t seem that valuable to me. These emerging game platforms are likely to have more traction on Android than on iOS as Android allows for the creation of competing payment systems and marketplaces (i.e., app stores).

Even scrappy startups are getting into the mix. Since many of the mobile-only social networks have only a small fraction of your friends signed on, PlacePlay uses location to add new friends for local tournaments. Although this is a game example, it could apply to various other app models. When a new app is launched and doesn’t have millions of active users, connecting people through geography can drive up user engagement. PlacePlay also allows advertisers to target users in places relevant to their businesses and increases payouts to developers.

This is just the beginning of an ever-evolving mobile app industry. Keep an eye on Facebook’s Project Spartan, which will enable HTML5 social apps, especially games, to use Facebook Credits as a payment mechanism, cutting out Apple. A major strength of the App Store is its easy payment system. With Project Spartan, Facebook plans to have Credits built in to allow developers to sell apps and offer in-app purchases. TechCrunch reports that there are currently 80 outside developers working with Facebook on the platform, including Zynga and The Huffington Post.

Key Mobile Social Takeaways

Easily accessing a user’s list of friends in mobile is big. For digital marketers, the good news is that most of these new social options in mobile can be implemented in ways that are similar to their social web counterparts.

Also, pay extra attention to your user interface design such as those cited by Flixster, Groupon, and PopCap Games. Having a great user interface is key to developing valuable social experiences in mobile.

Let me know if you know of any other companies that are making mobile more social.