App Exchange at Ad:Tech SF Highlights Innovation in Mobile Apps
Ad:Tech San Francisco; a lively conference for online marketers looking to connect, share insights and do business. I attended this year’s Ad:Tech as a first timer. Throughout all the hustle and bustle, networking and meetings, I took the opportunity to take a breather and attend one of the expo’s floor presentations, App Exchange. For me, this happened to be the most compelling hour of the show. App Exchange gave app developers a platform to promote their mobile applications, showcasing innovation in app development. While there were quite a few apps showcased, a few were doing some innovative stuff that caught my attention.
CauseWorld
CauseWorld (available for iPhone and Android) is an application that bridges the mobile and physical store worlds. Users who download the app and participate gain karma points when they check into retail stores. On top of that, they can use the app to locate and scan product barcodes within the store to gain additional karma. Accrued karma points are donated to the cause of their choice, such as the LiveStrong Foundation or American Red Cross. Incentivizing shopping with altruistic effects is nothing new, but the way CauseWorld does it certainly is. Additionally, CauseWorld rewards users with achievements that can be shared with Facebook friends, creating stickiness to the service much like FourSquare and Gowalla do with their achievement systems. With CauseWorld, everyone wins: users, causes, and businesses.
Wikitude
Augmented Reality (AR) is another innovation taking shape on mobile devices and Wikitude is leading the way. Wikitude (available for iPhone, Android and Symbian) overlays reference information through the camera of the phone, allowing users to see points of interest in their surrounding area. As quoted on the Wikitude site, Augmented Reality is identified as one of the top ten most disruptive new technologies for 2008-2012 by Gartner Research. In March of this year, Wikitude laid the foundation for further innovation by releasing their iPhone API, allowing developers to build their own AR apps.
textPlus
While sending texts is a staple in nearly every mobile user’s diet, textPlus innovates by improving this experience, providing free, unlimited group texting across iPhone/iPod, iPad, Android, and Blackberry platforms. This is what innovation is all about: taking an existing service and making it better. textPlus has the numbers to back up their claims of success — over 6 million app downloads (they state the average app in the iTunes App Store has less than 100,000 downloads) with users averaging one hour of in-app use per day. These are numbers not to be taken lightly.
Where do you see innovation in the mobile app landscape? Are you an app developer that’s created something innovative and want to share your story? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Eric Montag, Product Manager, W3i, LLC
Eric is a Pragmatic Marketing Certified Product Manager and uses his experience in internet marketing to lead the charge in product research, planning, and execution from both a consumer and business standpoint.
Find Out More on How W3i Can Grow Your Consumer App Business
RSS Feed
