YakShaving

Okay, back. Been gone for more than 2 months. One month in India and a month working getting ready for a pilot with a group here in Chicago for BettrAt (Which is going well — my favorite part of the webinar we held yesterday: “This (BettrAt) could be the next Facebook, but actually USEFUL”. Imagine that?

Anyway, lately I’ve been ruminating about the need for ephemeral, non-persistent applications. With 130K+ apps in the iTunes app store, and most of them irrelevant to me, I feel like there’s lots of value in helping people find the right ones.

I don’t find the online directories of iPhone apps useful — just like there’s very little value in the directories of the gazillions of Twitter apps that exist out there. (I think it’s astounding that some of them have actually received VC money).

Developers have found interesting ways to approach “Trying before you buy” in using Lite versions of applications to increase conversion (Something I’m thinking about myself with my latest exploits into the iTunes app store).

This is NOT the same thing as what people consider location based services today. The idea of “checking in” at certain locations and telling me where you are, crowding out my newsfeed or twitterfeed is obnoxious. I could care less where you are 98% of the time, quite frankly. Moreover, why don’t you just wear a sign that says “PLEASE ROB ME”?

Location based discovery of new experiences is roughly more like augmented reality. The buzzword has come to mean providing an additional graphical information layer over what you’re seeing. But by definition, augmenting just means “improving by adding to”. I for one would be more inclined to buy disposable apps situationally, as and when they are made aware to me, and I might actually need them. Kind of like the SuggestBar™ in BettrAt.