Developers

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Seesmic’s decision reflects on their business, not Blackberry

by alec on June 21, 2011

Yesterday the Seesmic team blindsided RIM with news that they would no longer develop Seesmic for Blackberry.  They were very public about it, and the only explanation offered was they would “discontinue support for Blackberry in order to focus development efforts on our most popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS, and Windows 7.”  The press seized on this statement as evidence that developers are abandoning the Blackberry platform.

Frankly, it’s lazy reporting.  Here’s why:

  1. RIM devices ship with a Twitter client built in already.  And it’s actually a pretty good client.  Personally, I wasn’t even aware that Seesmic was available for Blackberry, as I have never even bothered to search for another Twitter client for my Torch.
  2. On the basis of reviews written in Blackberry App World, Seesmic is a distant third in the universe of Blackberry Twitter clients.  RIM’s own client has over 14,000 reviews.  UberSocial, which is a feature rich location aware Twitter client, has over 4,000 reviews.  And Seesmic?  A whopping 518 reviews.

In other words, perhaps 3% of Blackberry Twitter users preferred Seesmic over other Twitter solutions for Blackberry.

It’s pretty clear that Seesmic is having their ass handed to them by their competitors. As Blackberry Cool points out, there are millions of Blackberry’s in use around the world.  The fact that Seesmic cannot build a business on this platform is a reflection on Seesmic’s business model, and Seesmic’s application, not the viability of Blackberry as a development platform.

Seesmic CEO Loic le Meur owes the RIM team an apology, in my opinion.  Seesmic is a failure on Blackberry, but he has chosen to let RIM take the blame.  That’s just cowardly.

And my friends in the press?  You put your own spin on Seesmic’s statements, and became a virtual lynch mob.  You were either stupid, or willing dupes – neither is pretty.  Shame on you.

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Three ways to improve the App Store model

by alec on May 17, 2011

App stores are all the rage, and it’s no secret that Apple is the current king of the software developers fruits and vegetables stand.  But as PC World points out, Apple didn’t invent the store, and there are many possible variations from Apple’s blueprint that would advantage developers and customers.

Here are three ways that app stores, in general, could be improved for developers:

  1. More transparency in curation. Apple’s acceptance criteria is a notorious black box.  In goes the app, and either it is accepted, or a cryptic refusal is sent back.  All app stores should make the rules obvious and transparent, and apply them even-handedly.
  2. Independent management. One of the virtues of Microsoft’s age-old model for licensing the “Designed for Windows” logos to third parties was simply that Microsoft had very little to do with the actual licensing.  Yes, they set the rules.  But then an independent organization – the Windows Hardware Quality Labs – managed the testing and acceptance process.
  3. Variable royalty rates. Most stores, including Apple’s, apply a flat percentage royalty rate to all products passing through the store.  That works fine for low priced items, but might not make sense for higher priced items.  In fact, when measured in bandwidth and transaction costs, a $1 item is much more expensive to sell than a $100 item.  So how about giving the sellers of higher priced items a break by building in a sliding scale for royalties?

What do you think?  Are there other ways to improve the App Store model?

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Microsoft-Skype: emerging themes

May 12, 2011
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Now that the dust has settled on the Microsoft acquisition of Skype story, two themes have emerged which I think are worth commenting on. Will Microsoft allow Skype to thrive as it has until now?  Or will the company deal it a bear hug, perhaps even unintentionally, loving Skype to death.  Amber MacArthur, in yesterday’s [...]

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Can 3.3.1 Kryptonite Kill Apple’s Super Powers?

May 4, 2010

On Monday, The New York Post published rumours that the US Government is close to launching an inquiry into Apple’s developer licensing terms, specifically the 3.3.1 clause in the developers agreement that bars developers from using any but Apple mandated development tools to create applications.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, one source said “Apple could [...]

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EComm: Time to change the station

October 29, 2009

I’ve spent a little over a day at eComm meeting people, listening to the conversations and presentations happening and reflecting on what I’ve heard. During the panel yesterday afternoon, I noted that I spend less on voice, data, and text messaging each month than I ever have, but more money on communications over all. What [...]

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BlackBerry Doomed?

October 29, 2009

Toktumi’s Peter Sisson asks Is the BlackBerry Doomed? and goes on to compare his recent experience of developing for BlackBerry with his experience as an iPhone developer.  Many of his complaints – non-standard hardware and OS versions in particular – are the same issues we ran into two years ago when we developed and delivered [...]

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Verizon courts developers too late?

July 14, 2009

GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham interviewed Verizon’s Ryan Hughes yesterday about the mobile application store that Verizon is building.  Developers will be able to build applications for whatever platform they want from Windows Mobile, Palm, Android and BlackBerry and receive a revenue share for whatever is delivered on the Verizon network.  The carrot? Developers can also tap [...]

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AIM Phoneline Rings Up

September 28, 2006

A couple of weeks ago, Bill Volk, Andy Abramson, and I spent the day at AOL with the AIM Phoneline team.  During that day, we, and the AIM Phoneline team, recorded a series of podcasts hosted by Andy.  For your listening pleasure, here they are: Ragui Kamel, Senior Vice President, AOL Voice Services Alex Quilici, Vice [...]

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