By this interview, Apps400 team would like to convey the special thanks to Mr.Jason Gabriele – The Developer of Snappn ios application.
Apps400 team pleased to publish it’s developer interview.Lets start our questions.
How and when it all did start?
Last year, I was working as a developer at Yahoo and didn’t have much input into the products we were developing. I felt I could do better if I had control over the product direction and user experience, too. I had been an iPhone user for years and had seen the rise of the app ecosystem. I thought about it some, and decided I wanted to do my own startup in the App Discovery market. I waited for some options to vest and then promptly quit!
What are the factors that are running in your mind while designing a new app?
A major change over the last decade has been the shift of work from development to product design. Developing an app is much easier now than it has ever been. You can use cloud services to handle most of the lower-level services while you just focus on the application layer. At the same time, users demand a higher level of product quality and simplicity than ever before. I knew that if I wanted my app to succeed, it would need to be really easy to use and still provide enough features to make people want to use it.
What are your chief target areas/customers in the market?
In the future, most people will go directly to apps for information instead of the web. Yet, there is no Google for apps – there can’t be, really. People use apps differently than they use the web. You can’t just make an search engine for apps as people look for apps more generally than they look for web pages. For instance, you want to find an app that finds restaurants, not search directly for the restaurants themselves. What we need is a way to find apps by reputation – similar to how Google determines a web page by using its PageRank system. Snappn does that by averaging the scores from professional reviews.
Which is your best work till date?
I really love the whole app but, I have to admit the real magic happens behind the scenes. There is an incredible amount of work going on to determine an app’s reputation (besides just collecting reviews). When using Snappn, you’ll notice that apps aren’t ordered by just the score. That’s because Snappn collects other data about an app and figures out how popular an app is – both from the App Store’s perspective and how much the app is referenced in general. I’m keeping the details there secret because I’ve put a ton of work into tweaking and testing the system to make sure it generates the best results.
How do you think is your app different from the others?
Snappn is focused on professional reviews and is somewhat unique in the App Discovery market with that regard. There are plenty of other apps that will help you discover a new app or game, but I think Snappn is the best because it tells you _why_ you should like it. Some other apps focus on finding deals (or free) apps for users, but in my experience, the apps they promote tend to be lower in quality. Snappn is focused on surfacing the very best apps and trying to show why an app or game is worth a few dollars upfront.
Which ecosystem do you prefer the most: Apple, Android or Windows Phone?
I’ve used iOS and Android extensively, and I’ve noticed that the quality of apps is generally higher on iOS. This is probably due to easier development on iOS as there are so many different Android versions and configurations out there. It doesn’t seem like Windows Phone is getting much traction and there might be some new competitors coming in the future. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.
Do you think that App developing is a job reasonable and financially strong enough to be continued as a regular one?
This is a great question and, while many talk about people making it rich developing an app, they don’t talk about all of the apps out there that don’t take off. One of the problems now is that people are becoming increasingly price adverse. They expect everything to be free while the developers need to generate some kind of income. This then leads to freemium apps that bug you constantly about purchasing something while using them. I think a better direction is to convince people that the app is worth paying for upfront, which is something I hope Snappn will do by linking to professional app reviews that the user can read before they buy an app.
What is your current status in the market share or number of customers?
It just launched a couple of weeks ago and I’m an independent developer, so there aren’t many users right now. The people that do try it tell me how much they like the app, so really I just need to keep getting the word out!
What are your future plans?
There are plenty of new features planned, including better recommendations and some simpler features that users have requested (like custom avatars). My main focus right now is just getting people to try it out.
Any last words for our viewers?
Try my app out and tell your friends! =)
App Details:
App Name : Snappn
Website : http://snap.pn
Twitter : @SnappnApps
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/snappnapps
Apps Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id596644071
Thanks for your time Jason, We wish you Good luck for your future projects !
