I've just learned that apps can now be gifted to friends in the same way that music can. HERE I'm wondering now how developers (without deep pockets) might be able to make the best use of the new feature. Or maybe we won't need to as our loyal fans will now just start buying in bulk...
This is cool! I've wanted this feature for a while! More for just giving gifts in general than for promotional potential though.
Yeah... you agreed to Apples new disclaimer without even reading it? But it is in fact a cool new feature - makes app trades over stores in different countries very easy. And now - Hodapp can start making a lot of cool contest and gifting us with apps!!
hmmm I hope gifting apps don't raise the rank. Top paid apps were only doing around 10-15k a day. And if you're the dev, 70% of that goes back to yourself so it really only cost 3-5k to buy a top 10 spot. OMG.
That was the sort of scenario I was mulling over, hence my reference to deep pockets. Cheer up though comrade - it might never happen...
Guaranteed that someone tries this within the next 3 days. We'll know soon enough if the top 10 spots are replaced by random apps. I mean, it's only a 3k bet for a potential 5 figure reward or much, much more. Probably cost less than 3k to find out if the ranks are moving and stop if it isn't. Would cost less than 1k to test a 99c app really... I dunno why I'm posting this in a public forum instead of trying it myself. p.s. If it works, I hope Apple bans the entire account and pulls all their apps for abusing the app store.
Seems to me that you'd need a pretty powerful marketing machine for it to actually work though so it would be very hard to achieve for a small indie. Other than that, you may be right.
It'd be cool if you could gift an app from within that app, just press a button, enter an email address and your password and a friend is sent (a download code for) the app. Imagine being able to unlock extra content by gifting the app. That'd be incredibly cool
I'd be surprised if some of the bigger companies (that use pr firms) weren't already doing this with normal bulk buys to ensure that their apps get an initial leap into a favorable chart position.
It'll be interesting to see what happens & how Apple will deal with it, particularly as devs have been waiting for this option to be introduced for a while now. There's a thought-provoking discussion of the possibilities HERE.
It's about F'n time you can do this. Several times I've given someone a gift card and had to tell them "don't spend it yet!" then had them log in so I could buy them something. Next I hope for: "Manually Manage Applications" in iTunes, and some sort of granular backup of Apps' data (So I can remove and reinstall apps w/out losing data w/out having to resort to a backup.)
anybody knows if sending gifts work only within one country? Or is it possible to send gifts within all stores?
With regards to devs buying their way to the top with this method, have you consider how much work it actually takes to do that? If you want to gift an app to 1,000 people you have to do it 1,000 times. (Unless you can gift to multiple people at once; I haven't checked yet) That's a hell of a lot of work.
Surely not impossible for a well-organised outfit with a strong marketing presence & I'm sure we can all think of a few that might fit the bill. Launch your 'free' promotion, gather email addresses from excited punters, then get your team of 20 monkies to frantically use their $1,000 iTunes gift cards to pass on the gifts. As I mused though, not for the poor indie dev, but still perhaps possible. The more I think about it, the more confident I am that Apple will see the potential for 'abuse' though and stamp on it. I'm really not sure whether I would personally consider this approach to be wrong or abusive. Major success on the App Store has often been directly related to the spending power of the developer/publisher & I've come to accept that even though it seems unfair to those of us who have no financial backing. And one can say the same of business in general.
Crikey! It seems that you wouldn't necessarily even have to pay full price for the gift cards! Sometimes a simple act of generosity can motivate employees, impress prospective clients, and lead to more loyal customers. Its all possible with the gift of a new iPod, Mac, or iTunes Gift Card. Contact your Apple representative and ask about special volume pricing: 1-877-275-IPOD
You can indeed gift multiple people at once. You just need a comma-separated list of email addresses, and the text field appears to allow an unlimited number - not that I've tried it, maybe there's a limit once you submit the form (one could hope). I'm sure there are places on the internet where people would be willing to hand over their email addresses in exchange for free stuff. Seems one person could organize a mass gifting to prop up their ratings pretty easily. I'm guessing someone will try this sooner rather than later (if they haven't already).
I dunno. If someone finds out it pay dividends, even poor ethically-impaired indies might scrape together a way. I'd suggest that gifted apps shouldn't count towards sales, but they are technically sales and it would seem unfair to quash that. Perhaps we should keep an eye on Mechanical Turk then to see if anyone takes out such an iPhone-related HIT.
Damn. I'm not even a developer, but that has me worried. Why pay for advertising when you can pay for sales, and likely get some advertising thrown into the bargain via competitions and word of mouth?
