Mobile Dev Memo began as Ufert.se, a personal blog about the mobile gaming industry, on June 14, 2012 (at least, that is when the site’s first post was published). The site was moved to the MobileDevMemo.com domain on October 7th, 2013; across both domains, and in both incarnations of the site, 141 posts have been published (or 1.74 posts per week).
The top 5 posts published in 2013 generated more than 30,000 views:
- How much money is Candy Crush Saga making?
Published: June 7, 2013
Number of Views: 11,866Based on King’s decision to stop displaying advertisements in its games, I estimated that Candy Crush Saga — the perennial #1 or #2 Top Grossing game in the App Store — was generating between $2.5 and $6.3MM per day. - Minimum Viable Metrics for Mobile
Published: February 5, 2013
Number of Views: 5,295I presented a minimum set of metrics that should be tracked for a freemium mobile product and provided a template for tracking those in an analytics dashboard. - Dear indie mobile game developer
Published: August 26, 2013
Number of Views: 4,749I wrote an “open letter” to independent mobile game developers, identifying the risks and challenges they face in an evolving and increasingly challenging business environment for mobile games. - Guide to Mobile App Analytics
Published: July 22, 2013
Number of Views: 4,540A continually updated directory of mobile analytics providers. - The economics of mobile game publishing
Published: April 15, 2013
Number of Views: 4,022An overview of the financial dynamics at play in most standard mobile game publishing agreements and the impact they have on a developer’s revenue stream.
My personal favorite posts from 2013 on this site were:
- The role of LTV in freemium
Published: August 5, 2013How lifetime customer value fits into the freemium business model and should be used for making decisions. - Quantitative Literacy: An interview with Wharton Professor Dr. Peter Fader
Published: August 8, 2013An interview with Peter Fader, one of the most prolific publishers of academic literature around quantitative approaches to calculating lifetime customer value. - Five characteristics of a viral product
Published: September 16, 2013Five traits common to many viral products. - Defining viral growth for mobile apps
Published: October 21, 2013What does sustainable viral growth look like for a mobile app? - How Fun Run topped the App Store with a $0 marketing budget
Published: December 10, 2013A guest post by Aurora Klæboe Berg of Dirtybit about their launch strategy for Fun Run. Fun Run achieved an impressive number of downloads despite not being promoted through traditional paid channels.
2013 was an exciting year for this site: on March 7th, 2013, I signed a publishing agreement with Elsevier to write Freemium Economics, a practical, analytical guide to implementing the freemium business model, based largely on the volume of articles that I had written for Mobile Dev Memo. Freemium Economics is now available for pre-sale and will be published in early February.
The initial transformation of this site from a personal blog into an aggregator that publishes original content was meant to broaden the scope of its appeal from the business concerns of mobile game developers into a general resource for anyone involved in developing mobile apps. Another such transformation will take place next week, hopefully again broadening the appeal of the site to the entire universe of mobile-focused professionals: analysts, marketers, developers, executives, investors, etc.
In 2014, Mobile Dev Memo’s mission is to become the mobile industry’s most comprehensive source of news, opinion, and data. I offer a personal thank you to everyone that read Mobile Dev Memo (née Ufert.se) in 2013 and look forward to a more focused and informational 2014.
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