Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps

I love this about Windows Phone's Live Tiles. I never open my weather app. I hardly ever open the Facebook app. I hardly ever open my stock market app. I just check their Live Tile, and at a glance it tells me exactly what I need to know. It's the biggest thing I miss, by far, when I'm using my Android phone. The information density of Android and iOS doesn't even come close, even with a proper notification center.<p>I really want Android live tiles. Widgets just aren't comparable.

Seems like the author has only worked with iOS.<p>On Android push notifications are done through GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), when it's sent your application gets a callback (Intent). So it is up to the application to decide what to do with it, whether it is to show a notification or do something else entirely. So on Android you have a pretty good idea that the the user is actually getting a notification. Jelly Bean and up you can also do very rich notifications with images and actions built right into it.<p>On iOS when a remote push notification is received there is no indication sent to the application at all. The only way the application knows something has happened is if the user actually opens the notification.<p>I haven't programmed on windows phone, so I am not sure how much an app developer knows that a user is viewing a live tile or not. Maybe someone who's built one can chime in.<p>Overall it seems to me, that what the author is describing is Android, where the app developer has at least some feedback as to whether a user is seeing the notification (albeit not an exact: user has seen x notif).<p>Edit: Wording

I know this is completely off topic, but is there any reason a website should have a rapidly changing gif animation as their tab icon?<p>I tend to open a ton of tabs and leave them open (<i>particularly</i> if they're interesting and I want to re-read it or refer to it in a blog post), but the constant oscillation of that tab icon is so distracting that I feel compelled to close that tab as soon as possible since it's going to get in my peripheral vision as I do other work (it's even distracting me as I type this very post!)<p>I thought the blog post was really interesting but now the only thing I remember about the site is the obnoxious icon, and it compels me not to look at the archives for other potentially intriguing posts :(.<p>Dear OP, <i>please</i> change that icon. I think it will increase readership and good will of your otherwise interesting blog.

I'm the exact opposite -- using Facebook for many years and experimenting with many apps has trained me to avoid allowing applications to interact with me out of band.<p>Back in the day, I was getting harassed about my friend's achievements in Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook. More recently, some app my wife installed lets me know every time I'm within a quarter mile of a Target store. The beauty of iOS is that I don't need to deal with a dozen little icons demanding attention like in Windows.<p>The Windows 8 approach is refreshing, I'm curious to see how it develops.

I don't know too much about how push notifications work, but don't they have some kind of tracking on them? If not, why not? That would seem like a perfect (obvious) solution for what the article describes. If you could somehow track when people take actions on your push notifications, or discard them. Or heck, even if someone decided to receive them, that should indicate that they are looking at them. Mainly because if someone isn't looking at them, they would probably get very annoyed by push notifications from apps they do not care about and thus, turn those notifications off.<p>Again, maybe I'm just naive about how it all works, but it seems like it could be a pretty measurable metric already?

&#62; Imagine if app developers could send more data (images, videos) through push notifications, or even receive simple responses (“Yes” / “No”) from users without requiring users to launch the application itself.<p>You can do this today on Android.

Dark Sky definitely knows you're getting value on those notifications. Popular apps get positive ratings from happy users. Dark sky doesn't need a specific metric to tell them the notifications are working; having a bunch of people 5-star your app saying "I love the notifications!" is sufficient.

Never heard about Moves but it seems to record everything, send it to their server, analyze it there, then send you that notification. So, they know it's being used.

The author says the app developers have no way of knowing if he's using their app. Now having never developed an iPhone/Android app, just want to confirm if it is true. Isn't it that their servers would know that they are sending push notification to a phone after all?

"Imagine an entire suite of apps with which you interact without ever opening. Imagine if app developers could send more data (images, videos) through push notifications, or even receive simple responses (“Yes” / “No”) from users without requiring users to launch the application itself."<p>Then what is the point of having apps? Isn't this just cramming a lot of extra bits into the notifications? I think if all apps did more and more in the notifications, people would start to say it was cluttered or difficult to use/read.<p>The great thing about notifications for me is they are quick and simple. If I want to do more, the application is a click away. I don't need a faux app inside the notifications panel.

I totally disagree here. I think most people know how to turn off their push notifications and its way easier than unsubscribing from an email newsletter, how many notifications pushed out and how many active users in my opinion would be a direct correlation.

This triggered a Deja-vu moment for me from pre-tablet times when there were entire web-sites sprouting up around the no-click movement. You could do everything without clicking, until touch-screen devices came out and roll-overs stopped being an option.<p>I think real-time updates can work really well in a google glass world, especially with smart watches. Although they can cause trouble if you're trying to focus on something. I foresee a hide-notifications button next to the mute button one day.<p>Just like the no-click movement, a notification-heavy world will probably piss off analytics people, until metrics on data displayed/consumed notifications come out.

This is why Google Now is so awesome. It's a whole suite of basic apps that most people use, pushed to you only when they're relevant. It's the most impressive software on my phone by far (and I have 200+ apps).

Unrelated, but you have an error on your page:<p><pre><code> Warning: sprintf(): Too few arguments in /home/jakelevine/webapps/blog3/wp-content/themes/codium-extend/functions.php on line 190</code></pre>

I find it curious that the idea being touted is essentially the same as the the way iGoogle works. And of course iGoogle is being shut down.<p>So why is one on the rise and the other falling? Is this yet another example of the apps-win-over-the-web trend? Is the problem with iGoogle that it was trapped in the browser? Is it that iGoogle was one company's little piece of the web versus an idea that is being pushed as the front-and-center UI for an OS?

One way to know if a user is getting utility out of your product is to charge a monthly subscription. If a user is paying you, you know they are using the app and gaining utility from it, even if it's just a daily push notification. If they stop paying you, you know they are not getting utility from the app.

Hmm so you can't track how many people turn off the notifications? I would assume the metric would be based on how many people leave them on without getting annoyed and switch them off. The lower your notification disable rate is, the more successful you are right?

Isn't the value from the number of installs of a app or the number of times someone paid for the app? Unless they started using notifications to send me ads....which with 100% certainty cause me to uninstall the app (if such a practice is even allowed).

"how many steps i took yesterday "valuable information"<p>ah. :P<p>I think this will just end up in a popup nightmare anyway. "you have 50 notifications - 45 requires a reply" inline or not: yay.

I think it would also be interesting if one could simply subscribe to push notifications without even having to download an app.

This light interaction is exactly the sort of thing that products like Glass are going to excel at.

On Apple, isn't a major limitation of iOS? OR is there a mechanism to utilize push better?

Isn't this what analytic packages are for? The app receiving the push message on your phone could anonymously provide analytics back to the server and with that knowledge alone, they know you are using it. Also additional analytics can be provided to see if you actually open the app.

&#62; The business impact is that companies are evaluated and funded on the basis of metrics like Daily Active Use, Monthly Active Use, Impressions, Visits. Notifications happen prior to all of these metrics.<p>These are all vanity metrics, not revenue metrics. There is no problem in adding a new one to the list: "Notifications served" and assuming they are received by engaged users. Just like page views and visits, as good and as bad.