Database Develop

Apsalar Interview

Below is the text of a brief email interview conducted with Sarah Teng, Director of Marketing at Apsalar, for an article about app analytics that will be published soon to the XDA Portal. If you have any experiences with specific analytics providers, post them in this forum.
What are the most valuable pieces of data that come out of your product? Why? Give examples of how I might get actionable data, make a change, and improve results.
Apsalar provides free in-app & campaign attribution analytics that provide actionable data for developers to improve their business. Developers find tremendous value in our cohort analysis, trending report, funnel analysis & the ability to automatically track in-app revenue. These features give developers the tools to measure engagement, retention and monetization. We recently published a case study with Trivi.al, where they leveraged our funnel analysis to identify a key bottleneck in their user invite process, and using that data, were able to double their viral coefficient (a measure of virality of their app.) We also helped Motion Math double their conversion rates (see case study here).
What most differentiates you from your competitors (features, pricing, etc)?
Apsalar differentiates itself in a few key ways. The first is that we are a completely free analytics solution. We want to give tools to developers to help them build better apps, which thousands have done using our analytics. Also, we are a mobile first solution, not a web solution ported over to mobile. This is key because we have built an analytics platform with mobile developers in mind, using mobile identifiers and metrics, vs. working around web-based metrics like the pageview. Finally, we are focused on behavioral metrics, such as users' revenue, engagement, and retention. our ability to track revenue automatically for developers is an extremely valuable feature. Developers need an easy and accurate picture of how their business is performing, and looking at which SKUs are generating the most revenue, including slicing that data by marketing campaign source, is invaluable information that helps them build a better business, not just a better app.
Explain your range of pricing and, if you have a low tier or free option, what features are only available to premium users?
Our analytics solution is completely free, and there are no usage limits.
Are there any technical aspects of implementation that would be helpful to explain?
In order to gain access to Apsalar's analytics platform, developers simply need to download our lightweight SDK and drop it into their app. The basic integration process takes ~5 minutes.
What advice would you give to help make new independent app developers more successful?
Measure & focus on engagement of users, not quantity of users. Focus on measuring the right metrics to track using a funnel or cohort analysis, and optimize your app for high engagement metrics. We recently published an ebook on this topic, explaining which 5 engagement metrics developers must track for their mobile apps.
Related to the above, in your mind what makes an app successful? Why do some "great" apps not get noticed?
With ~1.5M apps in the app stores today, it takes more than simply a great app to get noticed. Most developers use paid solutions to acquire users, but ensuring these users remain highly engaged with the application is the key. Our Big Data Lab recently released some data showing which categories of apps generate the most in-app purchases and saw that the apps that were unable to generate engagement were conincidentally unable to generate revenue. Feel free to check out some more of our data findings on our Big Data Lab Page.

New mobile to create mobile apps

Hello guys, I hope I will not be violating any rules. I would just like to inform the community with our mobile. It's been in the playstore for a while but have no traction yet since we have not focused on marketing it.
It is called Makeapp. It's goal is to empower everyone to be able to create apps for hobby, business, etc.
We know that the UI needs improvement at first glance as well as user experience during creation of apps. With it's current version, we have already used it for providing several apps for a few clients such as an HR mobile app, delivery app, mobile dashboard, several e-learning apps, etc with few to zero coding. With these even business owners and non techy people will be able to create their own apps.
Hope you give it a try and give us feedback and ideas on how we can improve the product.
We are not yet sure in open-sourcing it but there have been discussions.
Here's the link if you are interested.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.makeapp.v2

Thread closed as duplicate of https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/mobile-to-create-mobile-apps-t3909404

What happened to XDA?

I was looking in the wayback machine archives. I saw the original mission statement of XDA and it's so comericialized now. Here is the original mission statement from 2005.
The only two things not wrong about the name of this site are the dash and the dot. This site is about certain PDA-phones, made by a secretive firm called HTC in Taiwan. Their makers named them 'Wallaby', 'Himalaya' and 'Blue Angel', but almost nobody knows them by those names. The mobile provider O2 sells them under the brand-name 'XDA', and that's what we had in our hands first. They're also known as Qtek, MDA, SX-56 and many, many other names.
Then there's the 'developers' part: we noticed a profound lack of developer information for these devices. Since we develop software for it, we need information, and nobody seemed eager or ready to give us what we needed. So we 'reverse-engineered' the devices, found a lot of information, and shared it with the world.
But as our site grew we realised that lots of ordinary users were also suffering from a lack of support. They started using the xda-developers forum to communicate and before long the forum was as much a user forum as it was a developer forum.
And then finally there's the 'com' part of our name: we're not very commercial: no banner-ads, no pop-ups and we're not selling anything. The entire site is supported by private donations from the community that uses it. You are encouraged to make a donation if the site is useful to you.
So in short: never mind this site's name. No matter who you are or what brand-name is printed on your phone: if it looks like one of these, this site is for you.
Then there is this on the current rules... B) The site is a relatively small, personal website without commercial advertising / links (i.e. not a competitor forum-based site with purposes and aims similar to those of XDA-Developers......... Yet as we can clearly see is fully comericialized and I'm wondering if this is effecting the original mission statement of......
And then finally there's the 'com' part of our name: we're not very commercial: no banner-ads, no pop-ups and we're not selling anything. The entire site is supported by private donations from the community that uses it. You are encouraged to make a donation if the site is useful to you

I found one on Ebay, I never knew what XDA meant.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Xda-i-O2-windows-mobile/164165466814?hash=item2639063abe:g:-XEAAOSw-LJbccbX

That phone is a classic...

Massive corporate databases become government tools of surveillance

The number of data requests the US government sent to Google has increased 510% since 2010. US government requests to Facebook have also increased 364% since the beginning of 2013. The databases of private companies are increasingly being used to monitor individuals with little transparency into the process.
In 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency was conducting dragnet, mass surveillance, he forced the public to refocus on how to protect the right to privacy. These revelations inspired the founders of ProtonMail to begin thinking about how people could privately communicate with each other.
{Mod edit: Link removed - Oswald Boelcke, Moderator}

Two years later, the situation has not changed much. The only thing is user-awareness has now increased. People across the world are now awakening to the dangers of using social media apps which spy and collect our data and sell it off to the business houses.

ManojNairOnline said:
Two years later, the situation has not changed much. The only thing is user-awareness has now increased. People across the world are now awakening to the dangers of using social media apps which spy and collect our data and sell it off to the business houses.
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No need to answer spam threads of 2 yrs old

Censorship on social media platforms

Truth is the first casualty in a war or something similar is an often quoted saying these days. The recent reports of censorship on social media platforms are good examples of this censorship. Freedom of speech does not mean the license to troll or spread wrong information. I feel censorship by impartial judges is justified. The operative word being impartial.
What do you think? Do you agree with this view?
Do you think social media platforms should allow the unfiltered flow of content?

I don't use FB, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Tic-tok or bother to view a any of the major US news network's bs.
They pushed too hard and the worm has turned...

blackhawk said:
I don't use FB, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Tic-tok or bother to view a any of the major US news network's bs.
They pushed too hard and the worm has turned...
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Not using any of these social media apps is definitely one approach. The problem is if we have family members active on only these platforms!

ManojNairOnline said:
Not using any of these social media apps is definitely one approach. The problem is if we have family members active on only these platforms!
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Not good... my Mom didn't raise a fool.
Need to bring up their level of wherewithal.
All those sites are purveyors of disinformation at the very best and completely untrustworthy.

censorship is no longer a matter of social media, it's daily business on public media too and concerns all people around the world. nowadays it's even forced by law on governments outrage. we have passed 1984 long ago.
I don't see a reason why we should play their game and self-censor each own. On the other hand there are people out there spreading fake-news on telegram or whatever, so I am fine with our common board rules - no religion - no politics.
Having own opinion is part of our identity. we don't judge about someones avatar or profile signature - what we all have in common we are tech nerds, that's why we signed up here, don't we?

this is currently happen on xda? some true useful stuff is from 4pda (WwR MTK which is really great tool to create scatter files for mediatek devices, Orange State Disabler which patches little kernel to remove the 5 seconds delay on unlocked bootloader, just to mention two of them) and is mirrored on xda by members (not authors). some genius russian spend lot time and mind and offers it for free, so why not allow link to origin for respectful giving proper credits?
my opinion, xda should generally allow links to 4pda and only censor if necessary. each link should be surveyed for its advertising character on its own. only explicit links should removed, no generalized claims...
Oswald Boelcke said:
@Pervokur
Welcome to XDA! We're greatful that you share your knowledge.
However; I've removed the references to 4pda! Same applies to your post here.
4pda is not only another phone related website (and not at all affiliated with xda-developers) but also well known for the distribution of malware and warez. Links to 4pda are not accepted on XDA.
XDA Forum Rules (excerpt):
Regards
Oswald Boelcke
Senior Moderator
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aIecxs said:
this is currently happen on xda? some true useful stuff is from 4pda (WwR MTK which is really great tool to create scatter files for mediatek devices, Orange State Disabler which patches little kernel to remove the 5 seconds delay on unlocked bootloader, just to mention two of them) and is mirrored on xda by members (not authors). some genius russian spend lot time and mind and offers it for free, so why not allow link to origin for respectful giving proper credits?
my opinion, xda should generally allow links to 4pda and only censor if necessary. each link should be surveyed for its advertising character on its own. only explicit links should removed, no generalized claims...
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@Alecxs Thanks very much for sharing your opinion. Censorship is a very subjective qualification for an action especially on a completely private website. In all the years that I'm visiting, monitoring and contributing to XDA - even before I was allowed to join the very small team of volunteers who mediate this site - I've never seen that anything has been censored on XDA. What I've seen (and am actually also now doing as a moderator) is that posts were edited or removed in cases when no content would remain after an edit because those post were not in line with the rules of this private website.
Would you call it censorship if I remove a post with a link to a child-porn site and ban the author? I certainly wouldn't call it so, and I'd even report all information I have in such cases to my local police station. Would you call it censorship?
Would you call it censorship if I remove a link to a website that offers warez and cracked premium applications and inform the authors that we don't accept that at all and made all users aware about this stance shown in rule no. 6 of our forum rules? I certainly wouldn't call it so. Would you do?
If we've visitors at our home and we told them please not to smoke but they don't care and do, I ask them to immediately leave. Would you call that censorship of the actions of our visitors? I certainly wouldn't call it so. Would you do?
In your above post you clearly explain that 4pda is another phone related website; something I also mentioned in my post that you've quoted. And the third bullet of our rule no. 11 says:
Encouraging members to participate in forum activities on other phone related sites is prohibited.
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I think it's just fair and quite understandable that XDA doesn't want to be a promotional platform for another phone related website.
If I visit the restaurant "Bella Roma" and order my drinks but when the waiter brings the menu, I say negative, please bring me the menu of the "Bella Napoli", I like to order their food, I'm most likely told that I won't be served and eat at the "Bella Roma" but could leave any time.

no generalized claims. that's all I said
edit: google translate: no sweeping accusations. that's what I wanted to say