Publisher Albino Blacksheep’s endless runner with a 3D-rotating twist Run, which is a port of the hit web-based Flash game, has exploded up the top free Android apps charts since it launched, landing at the No. 12 spot as of today. Minigame collection title Hardest Game Ever 2, which had already reached the top 25 on the top free iOS apps charts, moved up the top free Android chart, squeaking into the top 25 at the last and final spot.

This week’s top free iPhone apps

This week’s top free iPad apps

This week’s top free Android apps

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service AppData.

22cans, which is led by game industry veteran Peter Molyneux, chose to partner with the Tokyo-headquartered DeNA to distribute and market Godus when it launches for Android and iOS. No official release date was revealed. The game will also utilize DeNA’s mobile social-gaming platform for western territories, Japan and Korea.

“We have huge respect for DeNA’s successes in mobile gaming,” said Peter Molyneux, founder of 22cans, in a statement. “By fusing their expertise and experience with our passion and dedication, we are going to make Godus a truly groundbreaking reinvention of the god game genre. As a global leader in developing and publishing mobile games, DeNA is the ideal partner for us to collaborate with on the launch of Godus. Their breadth of expertise working with second and third-party game developers is invaluable as we prepare for the release of Godus on mobile devices.”

Godus is God game in the same vein as Black and White, where in it the user is a God, able to wield divine powers over their devoted followers. The game starts off at the beginning of civilization, and as the user advances, the people in the game will grant the user belief. With this belief, users can create entire lands and shape them in their own vision. Also, there are other worlds and rival Gods to face and challenge via multiplayer. As a God, a user can unleash earthquakes, volcanoes, or tondos upon opponents, as well as deploy armies of their followers into battle.

“One of my first jobs in the video game industry was working on the quality assurance team for Peter’s Populous 2,” said Clive Downie, CEO of DeNAWest, in a statement. “That title and its predecessor set the tone for a whole new generation of games. Fast forward to 2013, and it’s an honor to have the opportunity to work with Peter again on the launch of Godus. Our team is looking forward to working with 22cans on a game that we know will set a new standard for the mobile generation.”

Google’s new Hangouts app is the next evolution of their Talk app. When first downloading Hangouts, Google informs the user that this new program will replace Talk. Users who frequently use Talk may be a bit hesitant to make the switch, but once they download and start using Hangouts, it becomes obvious that it is more than just a new version of Talk. Instead, Hangouts combines the simplicity of Talk with the level of interaction Google has been growing within Google+ Hangouts.

When first opening Hangouts, users may be prompted to sign in if they are not already. Once they have logged on, users are greeted to a screen that shows off their most frequently contacted friends on Google+, along with their entire list of contacts (both from Google+ and imported from mobile devices). Users can interact with any of their contacts by pressing their name on the list, or by using the search bar. The search bar can find current contacts via name, email, or number, and can add new contacts in the same way. Users can also connect with entire circles at once, but are not able to edit circles directly from the Hangouts app.

Once contacts and circles are selected, users are given two options: “Message” and “video call.” Messaging works just like Google Talk’s instant messaging. Two Google users can send text-based messages to each other over the Hangouts app and in a web browser. Communication between the app and browsers is nearly flawless. The only noticeable issue with messaging is how the emoticons in Hangouts will often not load for users in a web browser. Most users won’t find this to be a problem, but those who rely on heavy use of emoticons may be somewhat disappointed.

The main focus of Hangouts is the video call. Like the Google+ Hangouts feature, the mobile app allows numerous friends to connect with each other through a video chat. As is the case with messaging, mobile app users can seamlessly connect with contacts using a web browser, and vice versa. During our testing, the video call quality ran well when one side was using a desktop and the other on the Hangouts app. Camera quality is entirely dependent on each user’s hardware, but there were not performance issues during testing. The biggest issue with Hangouts is how the video call experience feels less user-friendly than in a web browser. Many of the options from the web can be found in the app, but utilizing them on mobile feels like a hassle.

Hangouts is a great app for straight-up messaging and video calls. Android users will already be signed into a Google account, so the process of setting up contacts is painless. Both messaging and video allow for seamless communication between browsers and mobile, and outside of a couple minor details, performance is nearly identical for both. Users who frequently use Hangouts may prefer to stick with the browser-based experience, but those who need to stay connected on the go will not be disappointed. The only real downside to Hangouts is that contacts need to be signed in to Google accounts, but this won’t be an issue for most users.

You can follow Hangouts’ progress with AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social apps and developers.

The mobile share dialog is a standard tool that enables users to post something back to Facebook. Similar to the Like button, the share dialog can be implemented with a small amount of code across any app and it works even if users haven’t logged into the app using Facebook. The dialog includes support for location tagging, friend tagging, custom privacy settings, deep linking and more.

Previously, mobile developers would have had to program their own sharing mechanism with these features or use the old “feed dialog” or iOS 6 Share Sheet, which are more limited in functionality and can require up to three extra steps for users.

Unlike Share Sheet, the native share dialog supports Open Graph publishing, as seen in the “read a book” example to the right. This is important because until now, developers had to ask users to log into their app using Facebook and allow various publishing permissions, which some users did not like.

Now, because the share dialog opens up the main Facebook app to complete the action, users don’t need to log into a third-party app with Facebook in order to share back via the Open Graph. As long as users have the Facebook app and are logged into that, they can easily publish to Facebook from any iOS app that uses the share dialog. This could greatly increase the amount of structured sharing through Open Graph verbs and objects.

Facebook first announced the native share dialog, along with other new mobile platform features, in April. However, it was only available in limited beta for iOS until today’s wide release. It is still in development for Android. The company says the share dialog should be used by default in all mobile apps that want to enable users to share something to the social network, even if the apps don’t have deeper Facebook integration, such as login or Open Graph.

Facebook offers a detailed comparison of all of a developer’s options for sharing back to Facebook — including the new share dialog, iOS Share Sheet, web-based feed dialog and Graph API – here. Technical documentation on the native share dialog is available here.

Acquinity Interactive

• Partner Sales Manager
• Director of Partner Sales
• Advertiser Injections Developer
• Sr. Email Marketing Manager

App Minis LLC

• Senior Unity Game Programmer

BrightRoll

• Manager, Publisher Development
• Marketing Manager
• Account Manager (CHI)

DeNa

• Performance Marketing Manager

Disney Interactive | Playdom

• Mobile Game Designer
• Sr. Game Designer

Fandango

• Social Media Marketing Manager

King

• Senior Game Developer

POPSUGAR

• Sr. Web Engineer
• Java Search Engineer

Tradeshift

• Enterprise Sales Engineer: East Coast

Wooga GmbH

• Software Engineer – Backend
• iOS Games Developer
• Game Designer – New Mobile Game

Puzzle & Dragons creator GungHo reaches $15.1B market cap; higher than Nintendo –

Apple clamps down on Line, users can no longer send virtual items as gifts – Japanese company Line Corp.’s removed a gift sharing feature from its iOS version of messaging app Line at the request of Apple. Prior to the removal, users could send other users stickers, a special emoji that’s been highly lucrative for the company to the tune of $58.9 million in revenue for Q1 2013, with 30 percent (approximately $17.4 million) of that revenue from stickers. Line recently surpassed the 150 million worldwide user mark.

Sonic The Hedgehog debuts on Android – Game developer and publisher Sega announced that the 16-bit Genesis classic Sonic The Hedgehog has launched on Android. The game, which was already available on iOS, is now available to download from the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

Kabam to implement Google+ Sign-In – Social game developer Kabam announced that it will be the first games company to implement Google+ Sign-In. The new integration will provide users with a simple and secure sign-in process on Kabam.com and the ability to engage users with interactive posts, which allow players to share content and prompt friends to take specific actions in their games.

Former New York Times digital and mobile products manager joins EA’s Board of Directors – Game developer and publisher Electronic Arts has appointed Denise F. Warren to its Board of Directors. Warren is executive vice president of the digital products and services group and former chief advertising officer at The New York Times Company. The announcement comes on the heels of EA’s Q4 2013 earnings report which revealed the company earned $104 million in revenue from mobile, and its increasing focus on mobile and digital products.

Elbouchikhi also says since launching the ability to monetize through subscriptions a year ago, revenue has doubled each quarter. He notes internet radio service Pandora as a perfect example of a top grossing app which monetizes its users via a subscription model.

Android for tablets is starting to show some growth now, Elbouchikhi reveals. In the past 12 months, Google was seeing a 1.7 times higher purchase rate of apps on tablets compared to apps on smartphones. “The additional cost of optimizing your apps for tablets is well worthwhile,” he says. Additionally, there’s a 2.2 times higher purchase rate on recent platform versions compared to prior ones. “Take advantage of the latest features, whether its Google+ sign-in or all the latest APIs released at I/O this week.” On top of all this growth, average revenue per user (ARPU) is 2.5 times greater year-over-year.

Below is a chart, showing that higher-rated apps in Google Play monetize better:

Google hasn’t been slowing down at all when it comes to adding and optimizing forms of payment. In July 2012, Google introduced the Google Play gift cards at retail. Google also launched promotional campaigns for Google Play credit by partnering with pre-paid phone providers, offering a $50 Google Play credit if a user purchases a particular pre-paid phone, for example. Carrier billing, one of the most lucrative forms of monetization in various parts of the world, is now available to 50 percent of Google Play’s daily active users. Google also optimized the purchase flow, making it more contextual, faster and simpler. According to Elbouchikhi, Google has dropped latency by 35 percent when users make purchases. Looking forward, Elbouchikhi says Google will invest more in expanding Google Play gift cards to more markets as well as carrier billing.

“We do want to get to the point when anyone can code an awesome app and make a living out of it,” he says.

Following Elbouchikhi, Bob Meese, who leads games business development for Google Play, shared some case studies from large, successful publishers which were defined as publishers who had a large amount of installs as well as monetized well. Messe hopes the case studies help developers understand what successful publishers are doing and how developers can apply those lessons to their own businesses. Before diving into case studies for particular publishers, Meese point out that a majority of the top grossing apps are free-to-play, with Minecraft – Pocket Edition as the one exception, which backs up Google’s 700 percent growth in in-app purchases.

“We’re not saying you need to push everything free-to-play, however also recognize the dominant trend toward free-to-play,” he says.

Meese then presented four case studies from Kiwi, DeNA, Kabam and Pandora. As we already reported at the 2013 Game Developers Conference, DeNA’s Blood Brothers has been monetizing well, doubling ARPU special, in-game events. Pandora, in particular, was the one case study of an app that wasn’t a game or built around an in-app purchase model. In February, Pandora implemented Google Play’s in-app bulling subscription feature, streamlining the purchasing process. Before, users had to leave the mobile app, subscribe to Pandora via the web then return to the mobile app. So now when Pandora prompts a user who’s exceeded the 43 hour listening limit, the app will ask the user to pay for a subscription from within the app. Below is a chart that shows how that change significantly increased revenue for the company.

“We’ve never discussed our search for Google Play until today,” Jain said.

Jain first explained major install sources for apps including browsing discovery features and search queries. Some browsing discovery features were charts (Editors’ picks, top free apps, etc.), personalized recommendations (a feature announced at Google I/O 2012), and related/cross-sell (“users also viewed” and “users also installed”). Jain then detailed two kinds of search queries — categorical and navigational. Categorical queries are broad search terms such as “free games,” “train schedules,” and “multiplayer games,” while navigational queries are exact search terms like “Angry Birds,” Hotel Tonight,” and “Beautylish.”

“For the average app, search actually makes up the vast majority of installs,” he added.

To follow up his statement, Jain reveals some Google Play search data for the first time. He said 12 percent of daily active users (DAU) search for apps daily, 50 percent of DAU search for apps weekly and Google sees six million unique phrases searched monthly.

Jain explained the anatomy of good app metadata. An app’s title is the most important piece of metadata, he said, adding that a title should be short and clear as well as unique and creative. “It’s important to be creative as well as detailed,” he says. For example, “Beautylish: Makeup Beauty Tips.” Also, developers should think like a user by getting their main message about their app in the first sentence of an app’s description in the app store. “Right up front, make sure your user knows what your app is about,” Jain explained. Screenshots and videos also play a citical role when encouraging users to download an app, he said.

When it comes to reviews and ratings, Jain reveals that reviews are ordered based on relevance to the user, such as reviews from others users who have the same device or live in the same country. Jain says reviews and ratings are “a very strong signal for us on Google Play.”

Developers are always wondering how their app can be featured in the app store. Jain reveals that Google takes into account app statistics such as installs, uninstalls, long installs (an app that has been installed for months) and engagement. “Of course we care about how many installs you have, the more you have, the higher in the ranks you go,” he says.

Below is a chart that shows how Google Play selects the apps that appear in the top lists on Google Play:

Lastly, Jain provided five tips for helping with app discovery:

1. Designed for tablets: Jain highly recommends that developers with a tablet app get the “designed for tablets” designation, which was announced as a new feature for the Google Play Store at Wednesday’s keynote.
2. Ensure helpful anchor text: Jain says most articles from news outlets don’t use a helpful anchor text that links to an app. He recommends developers work with writers to write something “interesting” in these links.
3. Avoid common mistakes: Don’t choose an app name that’s a variant of an existing popular app. Also, Jain says of the six million unique phrases searched monthly, 50 percent of the queries are misspelled.
4. Make your Android application package (APK) smaller: Smaller APKs get installed more.
5. Create the viral loop for your app: A. Get users to review your apps. B. Don’t get users to leave your app. This can be accomplished by adding an in-app Google+ +1 API, and in the future, Google will release an API for in-app user reviews. C. Integrate Google Play’s newly launched game services.

“At the end of the day, nothing substitutes a very good experience for your app,” Jain concludes.

500px is an iOS and Android app from the company of the same name. It is available now as a free download from the iTunes App Store and Google Play, and contains in-app purchases.

500px is a photo-based social networking app that encourages users to browse through the gallery of uploaded photos, upload their own, and connect with others who are checking out the same image. When 500px is first opened, users are given four options for logging in: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or a proprietary 500px account.  Signing up for a proprietary account doesn’t seem more or less beneficial than linking to a social network, as users are able to link numerous profiles to their account regardless of how they signed up. Once an account is created, users can opt for brief overview of the app, or jump right into the sea of pictures.

Users who like finding and sharing all types of photographs will find no shortage of content in 500px. Fortunately, sorting through the vast lineup of pictures is a rather simple task. Users are given a variety of sorting options, such as looking through popular images, editors’ choice, and recently added photos, among others. Users also have the options to search by certain categories. While options such as “animal” and “nature” are expected, there are some sorting options that are broader, such as “Black and White.” The lineup of photos currently available will be far more than most users will ever need, but this variety means that performing a keyword search, even for an obscure keyword, is bound to produce results. 

Of course, all social networks require interaction between users, and 500px has no shortage of such interaction. The easiest way for users to interact is to click the “like” button when viewing a photo. Liking a photo increases its rating, making it ultimately more visible to other users.  Users are also encouraged to click the “favorite” button on photos they would like to bookmark for later. Along with these options, users can also comment on photos. There doesn’t seem to be much conversation that occurs within the comments, but many users appear to provide thoughtful and constructive criticism to the photographer. Users who find a photographer they like are encouraged to follow them so they receive updates on their activity and uploads in the “Flow” section of the app.  Users can upload their own photographs, as well. However, this requires logging onto the 500px website and uploading them via the computer, as the app does not currently have an upload system in place.

Photographers can also sell digital copies of their images on 500px. Under the “Market” header, users can browse through the library of photos for sale and they can download that image for a small fee. The price for a download is generally no more than two or three dollars, and comes with a licensing agreement. Most photographs are for personal use only, though it is likely there are some that allow commercial use.

Overall, 500px is just for users who want to look at and share high-resolution, detailed photographs. Unlike other image-heavy social networks, like Pinterest and Facebook, the image content on 500px has a constant artistic approach. Users who enjoy sharing their pictures with friends, or like humor-based photos may find 500px to be a bit lacking in those areas. However, users who are looking for professional-quality images, or photographers looking to share their work, may find some value with 500px.

You can follow 500px’s progress with AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social apps and developers.

For his first tip, Meier says the easiest way for a developer to make an app magical is by looking at competitors.

“You can use your competitors as an eye for where you should be,” he says. But there’s a downfall when analyzing what competitors are doing. “Aiming for the past or where your competitors have been isn’t magic,” he adds.

Meier also says developers shouldn’t focus on the current breakdown of the Android operating system, which Google provides publicly at its developer dashboard.

“If you wait for Jelly Bean to hit 50 percent, you’re going to be behind,” he says. Meier adds that developers should build apps for users with the latest Android OS, especially.

An example of a magical moment is when two users hold their handsets together, tap the devices together, and initiate a multiplayer session in a game, similarly to the sharing capability in Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and newer handsets. “For regular people, this is the sort of stuff that creates magical experiences,” Meier says.

Meier provided some additional tips including not transmitting or storing contact details or location of users, supplying a privacy policy on Google Play and allowing users to delete stored data as well as not storing data that’s more than a few months old.

Meier continually drove the point home on designing a personalized app for everyone. To do that, a developer has to create context through tracking. A developer can implement tracking abilities in their apps such as location tracking, activity recognition (which can tell if a user is running, walking, cycling, etc.) and social tracking of a user’s Google+ profile. Utilizing a mobile device’s sensory abilities such as sight, sound, and touch, can create a rich sensory experience for the user that will feel magical.