Homer - More easily discover apps via your friends

@Besvinick it looks like you can edit things and fix apps that matched incorrectly. once you are in your profile, swipe right and hold down on an app - it then allows you to 1) This is not my app 2) Hide App 3) Show in App Store.

@Besvinick I see your deal pipeline! ;)

@rrhoover i think mostly interesting for People Like Us who are going to get tons of apps all the time. Not sure it's useful at all fro normals.

@rrhoover just a little precision. Appsfire was actually bigger than Chomp both in user base and usage as we improved the product over time and reached mostly organically 12 million downloads. but this being said that was still only a moderate success.

@rrhoover I agree, we had a good chat on this topic a few weeks ago on Twitter -- consumers don't realize they have a problem here, it's devs that think discovery needs to be fixed. It's kind of like convincing a mouse that mouse traps can be improved upon.

@johnolilly While I don't think I see myself returning to this everyday there is still an opportunity to get "normals" to use it on a weekly/monthly status. @hunterwalk tweeted " Want @ProductHunt & @HomerApp to have babies https://twitter.com/hunterwalk/s... " This to me is how you can get the normals. Ex. One could have Homer suggest/even download app downloads/trials based on top new product hunt apps. Also sending app recommendations to a family member might even be useful and engaging. I typically spend some time every holiday downloading new apps for my parents and friends who are not tuned into whats new and useful in "app world".

@belaurie good thoughts, Bianca. I frequently share apps with family and friends (1) explicitly by sending them a link to the app or telling them IRL or (2) implicitly by sharing something I created with the app (e.g. mindies, crazy to.be camera photos, screenshots of silly Taptalk messages). WRT #1 (explicit sharing), I already have a channel to communicate and my frequent use of SMS and MessageMe further encourages me to turn to them when I have the urge to share (habits!). #2 (implicit sharing) is something that's built into the app itself. Kathy Sierra has a great talk on making users feel badass (I also wrote about this as it relates to Mindie several months ago). If I was building a social app discovery service like Homer, I would think about how to compete with existing sharing behaviors (a super important part of this is making it easy) and make users feel badass doing so. cc @ebabchick @johnolilly @hunterwalk

@rrhoover What about a notification to update screens once a week/month? iOS notify, screen grab, done. Updates in background.

@rrhoover yeah, when can we get the native app? :)

@ryannegri - I'm not familiar enough with iOS to know if apps can pull photos from your camera roll (after giving permission) in the background. If so, that could be a neat way of updating with minimal friction. @johnolilly - it's coming! We shared some details on TechCrunch a few weeks ago. I'll shoot you a beta in about a week. :)

@kerby seriously - the old (pre-YC) Test Flight build I had was great but I don't think it's working anymore. Right, @rrhoover?

@Besvinick you're right, that unreleased build is no longer working since we updated the API. @davidkmckinney is close to a beta release. I'll shoot you a beta link when it's ready and for everyone else, signup for access here.

@OurielOhayon +1

@ebabchick thanks for being receptive, Elliot, and you've sparked my curiosity. :)

@ebabchick Just had a conversation the other day with @abrams about a similar idea. I think the data simply on homescreen apps could be very interesting. Although I like to know the obscure app that resides on your third screen, it's more interesting to know the most popular AND the most used apps (i.e. those residing on a homescreen or, even better, on the bottom row). Really interested to see where this heads in the long term. Nice work thus far!