Social gaming analytics provider Kontagent is bringing its analytics tools to mobile apps, the company announced Wednesday.
It’s typically harder to collect data on a mobile device than online. Social games that deliver data to Kontagent’s existing analytics program are always connected to the Internet and delivering data, whereas mobile devices like iPhones and tablets are not. So data about events is not delivered as soon as they happen — and is frequently delivered out of order — to programs that track app usage. But the company’s analytics algorithms specialize in out-of-order processing, said Kontagent CEO Jeff Tseng.
“We can track how long they were in the application, if they started playing on Monday or if they came back and played on Tuesday,” he said. “As long as you’re dealing with out-of-order processing you can provide the same metrics.”
Kontagent’s gaming analytics tool updates its web-based dashboard with feedback on social game usage every 10 seconds. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company can pretty much pick up everything that happens with an app — from virtual good sales to when a player completes a level. It regularly processes 10,000 social events per second and is moving to tens of thousands a second.
Developers put Kontagent’s “tags” on events within an app to keep track of them. That’s useful for developers that want to find out if something is going wrong with an app, such as too few people clicking on a button for spending money. The dashboard can also reveal if the app has crashed.
Tseng said the real-time monitoring can significantly lower the risk associated with deploying new features or updates. That’s important because social app makers have to continuously monitor the behavior of users and tweak their app ever so slightly to make sure users stay engaged and spend money.
Kontagent said it tripled its head count in 2010 but is hiring at an even faster pace now. The company recently announced that its analytics is now tracking 100 million users via the customers who subscribe to its analytics platform. The company has raised more than $6 million from Altos Ventures, Maverick Capital, The Facebook Fund, Extreme Venture Partners, The Hit Forge, and many angels. Kontagent was founded in 2007.
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