DiscoveryBeat videos: The masters explain how to get your app noticed

We’re pleased to present the videos of our DiscoveryBeat panel sessions that took place on Dec. 8.

They’re a good way to learn from some of the smartest minds about how to get your application noticed in an age of noise. With more than 100,000 apps on the iPhone and 500,000 apps on Facebook, it’s a huge challenge.

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To succeed, it might seem you have to schmooze Apple executives at private barbecues to get featured in the AppStore (something the guys at the successful game company SGN admitted was crucial for them), or that you have to spam Facebook users with game invites and ads (yep, and most people are doing this).

But this is an ecosystem with diverse voices, not a monoculture. It was fascinating to hear the variety of ways that companies are dealing with the problem of discovery.

At DiscoveryBeat, we got a taste of the full spectrum, from how Backflip Studios with just six employees has been able to get four top five iPhone hits, to Zynga, which has more than 232 million monthly active users on Facebook (AppData). They all face the common problem of how getting lucky with an app is, as our editor Matt Marshall put it, like getting struck by lightening. It’s hard to make it happen twice.

Yet these companies have managed to do it again and again. And they’re doing it with rapid-fire iteration, and trial and error. By quickly scrapping games or apps that don’t have quick traction, you reduce the risk of failure.

From Flurry to other experts on analytics and networks, we learned there are other, complex ways of promoting applications through friendship groups and like-minded users. Vijay Chattha, chief talker at AppLaunch PR, said that market research is cheap these days, ranging from $200 to $2,000 for focus groups. But many app developers don’t think of doing them.

The diversity of creative thinking was manifest on the “Discovery 1.0: Starting from Scratch with a new app” panel (see video, courtesy of ForaTV). Ge Wang and the team at Smule looked at the iPhone’s hardware and software, and assessed what it was uniquely capable of doing. The microphone was sensitive enough so that when you blow into it, it could detect the nuances of your breath. The touchscreen could also detect your finger placement on musical instrument. Smule uses those features to create Ocarina, a musical app that faithfully reproduces the sound of a South American flute-like instrument. The natrual thing to do was to create YouTube videos of people using the app, Wang said. Some, like this one with Wang playing, have had more than a million views.

The answer has to do with creativity in development and in marketing as well, not just in putting a big budget behind a new app. Backflip saw that its paid app, Rag Doll Blaster, was lagging and that its free app, Paper Toss, was going strong. So it inserted AdMob ads into Paper Toss that directed players to the paid app, which then saw its sales take off. The free game became a distribution vehicle for the paid game. (But Flurry’s Peter Farago warned that it can cost $3 in advertising to get someone to buy a 99 cent app).

Randy Angle, director of design at SGN, has worked on 60 games, including eight iPhone games. The iPhone games take six weeks to eight weeks to build to the point where they can be tested. Speed is very important and it is one of the biggest differences between the new games and the traditional games. Yet his company is also wrapping games with social features, such as leaderboards, the ability to challenge friends via Facebook Connect (which links you to your real friends on Facebook), and more things in the future.

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SGN is also thinking of creating games that tap into brands that are known among mainstream users. Angle said that sometimes you can get a brand owner to back and idea and get support for the game as a result. It’s worth noting that brands dominate the top games of 2009 on the iPhone, but Farrior’s small firm has two games on the top 30 list. Farago refers to the egalitarian nature of the iPhone’s top game rankings as “the rise of the middle class.”

“This is still a space where a smart, creative, talented team can make a difference,” Farrior said.

Angle said it matters to have a good relationship with Apple, which can feature iPhone games and draw huge attention to them. But Flurry started AppCircle, a platform to recommend apps based on a user’s actual tastes in playing games, on the assumption that the playing field can be leveled for smaller developers who don’t have such inside friendships. The power to buy an app lies in the consumer’s hands, not just the marketers or kingmakers. So recommendations, reviews, and ratings all make a big difference. So does having the right analytics about users, what they like, and removing the barriers that stand in the way of them using the app more.

I moderated the panel on “Discovery 2.0: Moving Your App to the Next Level” (see video, again courtesy of ForaTV).” Even the bigger companies have problems with discovery, said Neil Young chief executive of Ngmoco, an iPhone game publisher funded by Kleiner Perkins. Since the iPhone isn’t as much of a social platform as Facebook, developers big and small have to design games so they can create a “core compulsion loop” that keeps people playing, keeps them buying, and keeps them referring the game to their friends.

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Roy Sehgal, general manager at Zynga in charge of the Cafe World game — which has gotten more than 32 million monthly active users since September — acknowledges that the meaning of a successful game has been reset with the huge audiences growing on Facebook. But he feels like the industry is just at the beginning. He noted that Zynga tests its games by putting them out into the wild without telling anyone by inserting the game’s name into a directory. It wants immediate feedback on whether a game can spread in a viral way on its own.

John Pleasants, chief executive of Playdom, has a big following on MySpace, with eight of the top 25 games. But on Facebook, Zynga is 10 times larger. So while his company is formidable, it has to play catch up. He is picking up the pace on game launches and then acquired two Facebook game studios to get a better position. Those acquisitions can get you a bigger audience on Facebook who can spread the word about your other games. Those deals can thus lower your customer acquisition costs, lessening the need for advertising.

These markets are still very young. Facebook opened up its platform in 2007, and Zynga launched its poker game on the social network in mid-2007. Now, with so many users, it Zynga, Playfish, and Playdom have huge momentum. Venture capitalist Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners has referred to them as “the Big Three.” Can anyone stop them?

Even mighty Electronic Arts had to throw in the towel. Early on, Hasbro and EA fought with the makers of Scrabbulous, a Scrabble knock-off that was killed off by the threat of litigation, only to be replaced by a dull version of Scrabble that went nowhere. EA tried repeatedly to create hit games on Facebook in an effort to derail Zynga’s steady rise. But it finally agreed to buy Playfish for as much as $400 million in October. Sebastien  DeHalleux, chief operating officer at Playfish, said on the panel that the acquisition was all about getting together a critical mass of talent and intellectual property.

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As much as some companies are attempting to consolidate and dominate, it is interesting how circumstances can change things around and upset the balance of power.  Facebook is in the midst of shaking up the platform, and that is causing everyone to rethink how their games get discovered, said Roy Sehgal, general manager at Zynga.

DeHalleux accepts that Facebook thinks of itself not as a web site but an ever-changing service that has to continuously improve its relevance to users. Pleasants also agreed, saying removing spam from the system could help get users to play more games and to pay for more things inside them. The companies that understand the changes to the platform and jump on whatever is most relevant to discovery can pass up their slower rivals.

By comparison, Apple’s platform is even more nascent. The free-to-play model is just getting started, where you can give away an app and charge for a virtual good inside the app. In that sense, there is no dominant company now and everyone is in a free-for-all to gain traction quickly.

That may be why the brands are diving into the iPhone now. The last panel was moderated by Roy Bahat, president of IGN Entertainment, and it was entitled “Discovery 3.0 Bring in the Big Guys” (see video). This panel continued the discussion about the entry of brands, but in a more colorful way.

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Michael Chang, chief executive of mobile marketing firm Greystripe, said that brands can help get the initial inertia moving behind an ap. He noted his company started a program where advertisers had to pay only if  a user downloaded an app being advertised. That kind of marketing is much more cost effective and makes it much more affordable to app makers that otherwise couldn’t afford a big marketing budget. He noted that brands are showing their power, like the Twilight movie-themed apps that have proven very popular. Jon Vlassopulos, chief executive of Moderati, echoed that, saying his company created a successful app around the Vitamin Water brand by tapping fan interest in the rap artist 50 Cent. The app moved to No. 9 on the AppStore and No. 1 in its music section.

But Alex St. John, president and chief operating officer of hi5, emphatically insisted that brands don’t work, especially in an environment where it’s easy to try out game play for free. In the console business, the branding may get someone to buy a Spider-Man game for $60 before they try it out. But on the web, players have to be turned on by the game play or they drop a game right away. A considerable argument ensued. St. John says “putting hot chicks” into ads works better than brands.

Lisa Marino, newly appointed as chief revenue officer at RockYou, said that brands have to be careful about how they enter the market, no matter how great their brands are in mother media. She noted it’s a good idea to insert a brand into an already successful app to give that app more juice and cred among certain kinds of users. Marino noted that Zynga spent millions of dollars promoting FarmVille at the outset to get the app off the ground.

St. John said he believes that the place for the brands to show up is in the ads around games. He believes half the money going into social games will come not just from virtual goods, but from brands advertising. Marino agreed with him.

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“You think Zynga is making money now, wait until they get advertising right,” St. John said.

Vlassopulos closed with an interesting observation. Back in 1995, there were 100,000 or so web sites, just as there are iPhone apps now. People said there were too many and you would get lost. Now there are hundreds of millions of web sites, and there are three or four favorites for each person. So the idea that we have a saturated app market is not true. Marino noted that experimentation makes a huge difference in getting apps noticed. She said that RockYou does 120 code releases a week, with many of them testing ways to help apps spread.

Now that you’ve seen how easy it all is, you’re set, right?  :)