@jansseneilert We hear you Eilert but you are missing a very serious and sad point which I keep seeing in this community unwillingness to support indie founders, especially minority founders who are having a hard time raising vc funding. I am funding all of this for the past 3 years out of pocket.
We will eventually need millions for songbird to actually scale this for the entire globe.
Bird watchers which are around over 70 million in just the us spend thousands a year they add over $50 billion to our economy they don't complain about the pricing here so you might not be the target audience for them this is a discount.
Is this our final revenue model? Of course not we are still testing and scaling, eventually at scale we want to go free with in app purchases. But that won't happen until we have funding to actually turn this into a business, either from vcs or from revenue.
Making an app free doesn't support myself or my team guys. I also do not believe in traditional advertising to spam my users inside the apps so we 100% upfront charge premiums for our shit and run it like a real business that sells value.
@nicholassheriff Hey Nicholas, just for the sakes of it – I've payed 10,99. Your application wasn't able to identify a sparrow out of 4 meters distance in my backyard. I've tried several times. Always the message that I should try again. If you want to scale this globally it should work, I guess.
@nicholassheriff I don't think that he's saying he doesn't want to support a dev. I think that he's saying he wants to test if it actually works or not
@jansseneilert Eilert was it in the middle of a song, any other birds present? How long was the recording...can you email me info@sheriffv.com
Checkmark of what our system currently struggles with ( added this to the app description ) and we will present thing to users upon launching for the onboarding soon.
If you can't identify a bird, you might have one or many of these issues that need to be addressed:
If you are too far from the bird it will not work.
If you use a recording of a bird with all sorts of quality issues from youtube it will not work.
If there are multiple birds singing it currently will probably not work but we are working on this.
If you are a little too late to a song it will probably not work, or you might have to keep trying to capture other parts of it's song again.
If the background is far too noisy it will probably not work.
We currently also only identify the top 100 common birds our goal is to make the recognition and database more comprehensive, right now and extend it to 1,000 bird species with the hope of doing 10,000 within the next 6 months.
House sparrows are in there but we might not be able to ID all of the sparrow songs. Marking it down to do additional testing.
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Oh hey it's that guy i had an argument with on Twitter who makes like 10 clones of the same app and none of them work or even have proper websites!
@itsthisjustin With everyone upvoting Justin's comment literally having no context lol first off stop stalking and harassing me Justin. Secondly websites are dead tied to apps if your #1 purpose is to spam. Here is the link he is referring to and you can make up your mind as to wtf went on: https://twitter.com/heyChristian...
We don't give a crap about websites me and my team only scammers zone in on websites lol that we have to host to push bullshit to users, we 100% focus on what our users want which is support and value: https://songbird.canny.io/featur...
You can disagree with me on that but that's your opinion which doesn't phase me or my team or the hundreds of thousands of users that rely on our product monthly.
We have thousands of users hundreds of reviews over a 3 year period a lot of people in 160 countries will disagree with your lies Justin. We don't have clones when we actually have apps tailored to a specific audience backed up by real technology.
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@nicholassheriff So, you're $10 richer now, but not a single bird sound I pointed this at worked. I pulled up a list of bird calls on YouTube and tested about 10. None worked. I even used the bird you reference in your iTunes Screenshots. I'm not trying to be a jerk here man. I just think there's some humility that needs to happen. That entire twitter conversation was mean to say "hey take a look at your product FIRST before calling everyone a racist because you didn't get your way".
@nicholassheriff Love the idea! But am I the only one who isn't seeing any of the hundreds of reviews on the app page
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1) Couldn't be that hard to record a use case with a microphone/dslr setup in the woods, because obviously, you guys have been testing this app, so documenting the QA would be nice at $10.99 - Cuz you didn't just make the app and not QA it right?
2) Website/Support is broken, weird UX loop there. Would hate to not have any support at $10.99; Also - There are 0 ratings/reviews on the iTunes store. Tough to TOFTT at $10.99 and while investigating the makers of the app a lot of loose ends that left me wondering who made this app.
3) Do you have a list of the 100 common birds you support? Would be good to know a Blue Scrub Jay is available. In one of your examples, you list a Prothonotary Warbler, which as far as I know is only common in the South Western United States and is a bit rare.
4) What database of bird calls did you use to create the correlation to calls in the wild to identify birds on the app? Other than some images with the vector microphone over the image of a bird, like iBird, have you guys worked with National Audubon Society – Bird Song Collection? I understand licensing their audio is doable and could define a lot of the cost you are asking. Recoding nature's sounds is a very niche society and obviously you've been working with those groups in that realm, would be nice to see some documentation of that on https://songbird.canny.io/ which as a website is lacking.
Kinda smells like Not Hotdog.
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@charlesalexnder All of his apps are exactly like this though. Tons of super crazy claims with nothing to back them up. Just downloaded his "Flower" app. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...
Doesn't do a thing. I'm convinced these apps don't even have real code running behind them. They are all direct clones of each other with identical design and branding and just different "things" to detect. There needs to be a crap ton of solid technology behind these apps to do what they claim. No way this insane tech has been developed by the same guy behind this monster: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...
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@charlesalexnder As far as the websites, one of his apps used to go to another startup's website (because he forgot to renew his domain apparently). He has since updated his "support page" with a URL to his paypal account. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...
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@itsthisjustin I just found his Truffle App which is literally fucking Not Hotdog. This is absolute shit and should be taken down from PH. @rrhoover
@itsthisjustin I don't give a shit about any of this. 1) What bird Song / Call database do they use and 2) can we have footage of QA?
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@nicholassheriff this discussion among PH users is going about as well as the one we had one Twitter. I think the lesson to learn here is to be open to criticism. The response to the price, the lack of a video or other proof that it works are all valid feedback. There's also the question of it just flat out being a scam. There needs to be a level of humility that comes with product development. It's all about asking your users what they want. Build the right features for the right people at the right price.
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I love this idea... does it work?
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@brendanbeirne Based on the comments, it seems the answer to this is "kind of"
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@wfb can't wait to try it out. I'm muy intrigued 🦉🦆🦅🐔
Seems expensive, however, if you're an avid bird watcher I'm sure it's worth it. I have to say I'm really skeptical to whether this works or not and I think others are too. So to get them to pay that amount could be tricky. Perhaps upload a video showing this working?
@robswish So an app that is trying to do something revolutionary long term for every bird species known to man and we charge you $10 have you seen the market?
These are bird guides top paid guides for only a few dozen birds.
@nicholassheriff In my comment I say it’s worth it’s price. It’s probably worth more. However, given the average cost of apps and what users expect these days, most expect apps to be free, I’m just suggesting that you should create a video to show it working so that people believe that this app works and is worth its price tag. I’m a product designer and iOS developer. I’ve worked extensively with mobile apps and as a developer myself I understand how hard it can be to get people to pay what your app is worth.
@robswish I completely agree with you on more engagement around the experience Rob ( fellow product designer here myself ). For this specific niche we can survive as a paid app until we as a small team with no runway can survive being free with in app purchases, We've built over 50 apps in 3 years have done a lot managing hundreds of thousands of users learned a lot about the actual ins and outs of the business when you haven't raised funding.
This app could 100% die if we can't sustain the development, and fund this that's a very very real reality. Right now while we are in beta yes we are at a premium price as are our other apps, this isn't the final revenue model.
I want long term everything to be free Rob and conditional meaning I know there are various diffrent types of outdoor enthusiasts not just bird watchers and they should get to experience things for free, especially if they will use a product say once a year for example. But my team can't handle any of that right now. We had to sell a few apps just to find development of this Rob. For right now while we are in testing mode it's paid will I reduce the price it depends on what I see on my end I still have to also test what's called price elasticity Rob, it's something most do not test.
@nicholassheriff Cool, I wasn’t suggesting make it free. I actually hate how people expect apps to be free given the amount of time, effort and money that goes into making them.
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@nicholassheriff@robswish I think Rob makes a point.
You could maintain your price if you are convinced that the target users would be able to afford it.
However, like for any expensive product (I use "expensive" as 10$ is pretty expensive for a mobile app from a consumer point of vue), before buying it, the consumer must trust the product and therefore have a proof that it works.
So if you don't have the required means to develop/publish a free light version (restricted to 3 birds for ex?), which is completely understandable.
You could publish a video showcasing how the app works, the general user experience and a few birds as test samples. (which could also be useful to gain some attention from YouTube visitors)
Awesome idea though, Good luck!
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This is definitely SO cool! wish there was a lite version for me to try it out 2-3 times to see how good it can hear birds maybe 100 yards away to my iPhone before I buy it for $10
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