Application startups are in a mess: it's all for the promotion

Lead: In Friday, the online edition of the US Wired magazine wrote that the development of mobile applications attracted a lot of money. In order to achieve substantial economic returns, many of the lack of foresight of application developers at the use of dirty means to increase traffic, causing this burgeoning market chaos.

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Platform closure

As money flows into the application industry, the stakes are bigger and the developers are hold, starting to play a crooked line: buying traffic, fighting pornography, cheating, and doing anything to raise the rankings. For the sake of competition, these app developers are willing to use up all the dirty tricks-not only deceiving the user's time, but also deceiving investors ' money.

"I do believe someone will manipulate the data for financing," he said. "All financing companies seem to have made a breakthrough in data, some can reflect reality, and others are Kleiner," said Matt Murphy, partner Murphy, a venture capital firm. ”

If the "web is Dead" argument is established, the open ecosystem that relies on browsers will be replaced by closed applications, then it is not just venture capitalists and software developers who should pay attention to this improper behavior. In the ever-changing application industry, more and more enterprises began to abuse users ' privacy, waste user time, and even destroy the reputation of users. If the trend towards capital and user flows continues, the situation will only get worse.

This is exacerbated by the inherent lack of transparency in applications. In the web, advertising, kickbacks, and suspicious content are most often at a glance. In the application, the user's behavior is locked in proprietary software, trading through itunes and Google Play and other private platform, even advertising can only through the Tapjoy and flurry and other closed platforms. This creates an ideal environment for all sorts of vices.

Many vices

There are a lot of vices in today's applications, and while the flow of this approach is difficult to sustain, it can still be short-lived. There are several main:

1, the purchase of users

For example, when you play Android, you need to use a virtual currency to buy a new prop, but you don't want to use a credit card. No relationship, the application of built-in ads can remind you, as long as the installation of another application can get some gold coins.

This approach is called "Pay by Installation". Tapjoy could earn 100 million dollars a year before Apple blocked the model last year. Today, this pattern is mainly prevalent in Android systems.

2, advertising

The most typical example is the use of Facebook and Google AdWords platform for application. But with the development of precision advertising technology, the application of built-in advertising is booming. The size of the market is expected to reach $3 billion trillion, beyond mobile web advertising.

3, recommended

Tapjoy and Flurry's appcircle network can help paid application publishers improve traffic, registration, and even installation. The business is going by leaps and bounds. Peter Farago, vice president of Flurry, said that since the introduction of Appcircle 1.5 ago, the company's recommendation business has grown rapidly, and its current annual income has reached $ thousands of trillion Peter Faragu.

4, spread the rubbish information

Application developers who have partnerships with social networks can turn on the sharing function by default, turning into a short-term spam disseminator. This pattern sends more information, has more coverage, and requires fewer licenses than the conventional approach. The biggest advantage is that this is a completely free way to promote.

5. Improper content

Application developers have some room to play when dealing with pirated and pornographic content provided by users. In general, they will withdraw the improper content as quickly as possible-few application developers are willing to associate with such content. But if the flow is too hungry, it is possible to take this thirst way-and so on upload the content two weeks after the deletion,

With so many means, the temptation to flow is becoming stronger.

"It's certainly going to happen again, mostly for survival." Flurry Vice President Faragu said, "It's like taking part in a very important dance, and if you want to raise money, you want to look perfect." This is similar to the situation in which listed companies issue quarterly reports every three months. ”