Flash of Genius: The Blog

With the SAT coming up next week, I thought I’d look at the analytics data for the iPhone app, Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab, and see if there’s anything interesting. As expected, there are a few interesting tidbits here and there.

The funniest one is this: it seems users have a lot of interest in the word antebellum.

In fact, no other word is accessed more often than this one from the list of words organized by Latin root.

Thank you Lady Antebellum! Now we just need a rapper named Sir Circumlocution.

So the last blog entry has officially gone viral (slashdot, gizmodo, theregister.co.uk, etc.)

A lot of people have asked me two things in the last day:

1) Aren’t you mad at Apple?

2) How did all this publicity affect sales?

Here are the answers:

1) No, I’m not mad at Apple! Sure, it would have been nice to mention our Top 10 finish in the Android Developer Challenge. But Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab was selling well before then, and it continues to sell well. It’s a great flashcards app for studying for the SAT using word roots. (Please find out more about it here.)

A lot of customers have emailed me thanking me for it, and I believe that most sales are due to word of mouth, not to people finding the app randomly on the app store and then deciding whether to buy it based on the description.

Apple’s point of view is reasonable, and I really don’t understand developers who complain about them. I personally wouldn’t have ever made any software at all if it weren’t for Apple inspiring me with the iPhone, and now the iPad. I wouldn’t have had a platform on which to sell it, either.

Thank you, Apple!

2) This is interesting. Sales for the iPhone app haven’t changed at all, whereas sales for the Android app have gone up like 700%. Go figure. (Incidentally, even with the 700% increase, the iPhone app STILL sold more copies yesterday than the Android app.) They’re functionally the same app. They both teach vocabulary words in a smart way, based on the Latin and Greek roots. Personally, I think the iPhone version is even better because of the better transitions that come built into the iPhone SDK.

Oh well. I’m looking forward to blogging about the statistics of how people study for the SAT, now that I’ve incorporated Flurry into the app. What words do students struggle with? What word roots do people think about the most? How much do students cram vocab the morning of their SAT?

I’ll be blogging about this in the next few months. Please subscribe to the feed!

It seems that Apple doesn’t like it when developers mention Android in their app descriptions. As in, they won’t let Flash of Genius do it, even though it’s relevant and helps to increase sales of our app, Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab.

Today we got an email from the Apple approval process people:

Dear Flash of Genius, LLC,

Thank you for submitting Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 to the App Store.  During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections.

Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store.  While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate  to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!”  from the Application Description [Emphasis added].

Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

I suppose it’s logical, and I’m not complaining; Apple is a wonderful company to work with. I took out the offending bit from the description.

Meanwhile, I wish there were a wording that would somehow allow us to leverage our Top 10 finish in the Android Developer’s Challenge in the app description, without offending Apple. Maybe I’ll email them.

RIP, old app store description:

Welcome to the official blog of Flash of Genius.

This spring, as once again thousands of students study for their SAT using Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab, we will be collecting some anonymous user data using Flurry. We’ll mine the data for interesting statistical tidbits, a la OKTrends.

What words do students struggle with the most? How much easier is it to learn the words euphony and neologism if a student already knows the related word eulogy?

It’ll be a scientific adventure, and we’re looking forward to sharing the results with the world.

Stay tuned!