Hey guys, @timbjones and I built this project over a couple days while we are waiting for Apple to review our app.
We love playing with new apps but really good ones are so hard to find. We decided to build a service to help people discover new apps by delivering one really great iOS (for now) app over SMS everyday. We deliver a GIF preview of the app so you can check it out before heading over to the app store to download.
We'll be surfacing apps from a variety of genres including games. Most of the apps will be free but we're not limiting ourselves to that. We are also going to try and partner with a lot of paid apps and bring them to you free for one day via our service.
Let us know what you think - we'd love some feedback from the PH community.
Thanks!
@timbjones@nalin Very cool idea! Reminds me of a "Product Hunt Lite" feature (wink wink @rrhoover). As an app creator, I am constantly on the app store downloading the latest, so I can relate to the struggle staying on top of what's new. Can't wait to see what apps you guys suggest. On that note - a cool future feature would be to allow recipients to reply with a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down emoji so you can deliver better recommendations (a la Pandora).
Congrats guys!
@adammash yup. Just reply with "off" and you'll miss us immediately :)
Great suggestion Adam! We're contemplating a variety of interactions via sms like rating & sharing. Also thinking about a leaderboard that awards the most points to the first downloaders.
@divjpatel Honestly it might be a bit before we get to new countries. Want to make sure we do a really good job in our home market first.
Focused only on apps right now but we may entertain closed betas as well.
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Hey guys! Congrats on the launch! This is an awesome idea. A lightweight product hunt.
I am curious how you plan on monetizing an SMS service like this? I've looked into using services like Twilio, but for someone strapped for cash it could get a little pricey. Curious about your thoughts regarding this?
@kevinjbastien Currently we're just trying to build a strong user base by curating amazing apps. In the future if there are amazing apps that have user acquisition budgets, we could possibly go that route.
However we will NEVER recommend an app unless it's super high quality. We know we have nothing if we're not a credible source of only the best apps.
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Great concept, really interested in it. Not sure SMS is best delivery method, I reckon it would annoy me. How do you find good apps to feature?
@tonytanevski We spend a lot of time scouring the App Store and also accept submissions from developers. We're looking into a systematic way of unearthing new and interesting apps as well.
What other delivery methods would you like to see? You can reply with "off" to turn us off anytime. We hope our recommendations will be strong enough that we don't get annoying.
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@nalin I suppose it's not really different to push notifications - and better than email. Maybe Twitter feed would be more my thing.
I love this idea! Referring to the question above - it would be awesome if you could be open to non-US phones + promote apps that are in every App Store :)
Another addition to my Invisible Apps collection.
We're releasing an update to our Product Hunt iOS app to include push notifications shortly but I've also been itching to build a dead simple app similar to this. It would send a push notification recommending one app a day that's highly upvoted by the community. It's not the most creative app and many have built something similar but combine the community + some cute branding ideas I have, I think it could be a fun and useful app to experience Product Hunt in a new way.
Great work, @nalin, and nice use of GIFs as quick demos. 👏
@rrhoover Thanks Ryan! Let's chat and see if there is an opp to work together on that.
Re:gifs we think they are completely under utilized for marketing. For our new app celebrate were thinking of making gif that tells the story around our app instead of a video.
Also we may productize the ability to create a GIF from your AppStore logo and screenshots. Would developers be interested in this? Let us know!
This is really cool. A nice, lightweight way to help with app discovery. Will definitely discuss on this week's Weekly Product Roundup on upclose.me/matt
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