作者：Charles Hudson

在扮演SoftTech VC合伙人和Bionic Panda Games联合创始人双重角色中，我看到很多公司和团队都在努力解决手机应用曝光问题。简单点说，现有问题是还有很多非常有趣的应用尚未被用户发现。参考苹果或Android市场的应用数量便非常明了，没有用户能够熟知其中所有富有趣味的应用。

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总的来说，我碰见过的团队都非常英明，能以积极方式影响手机应用世界。但同业内大量人士接触后，我开始认为应用曝光相对希望获得有用或有趣应用的用户来说，更是个需引起开发公司关注的问题。以下3个观点仅供大家展开讨论。

1. 现实世界存在很多面对面手机应用曝光现象，这些应用或许从未出现在你的应用分析系统中。

若你最近外出去某个大城市，你就会碰见此情况。有人拿出手机展示某应用，同桌其他人有说，“哇！这很不错。我也要安装。”然后那个人就开始下载应用，这是应用商店、智能手机和优质数据连接相结合的优点所在，若发现自己喜欢的应用，你几乎就能立即下载。无需等到回家看见好友发出的邀请或邮件。你可以立即体验该应用。我不确定未来应用是否能够促进面对面交流。

对于很多分析系统来说，这些安装看起大多十分自然（用户就是自然安装该应用，而非通过特定链接下载该产品），虽然事实并非如此。开发者很难获悉某特定应用出现此情况的频率。这不言而喻，但我还是要说在面对面曝光（游戏邦注：好友能够告知你应用相关情况，包括选择原因和使用方式）情况下，用户大多会选择立即安装好友所使用的应用。这对很多人来说颇有价值。

2. 很多用户不会积极寻找新应用，但会出于能够获得回馈或好友推荐进行下载。

我不认为会有人会无所事事想着怎么发现新应用。多数人都忙于其他事情，如阅读、玩已有应用、聊天。但就像我前面提到的，获悉好友圈正在使用的应用颇有价值。例如，若你所有朋友都使用某定位分享、图片分享、社交网络或其他社交应用，获悉相关情况能够影响你对应用的选择。

另一用例就是安装奖励模式。若用户正使用某应用，获悉能够通过下载该应用或安装他人所使用的应用获得相应奖励，他们当然愿意为之。安装应用并不会给用户带来任何损失（游戏邦注：除存储空间和消耗时间），是个公开行为。

3. 开放问题：用户是否会安装某应用，帮助他们发现其他应用？

我的问题是围绕应用曝光作为一个产品而言。如今市场中的很多应用都是关于开启或安装某应用以发现其他应用。我不确定这是消费希望的模式，但现在下结论还有点为时过早。

姑且不论以上所述，应用曝光对开发者来说仍旧是个问题。这不过是我们面对商店当中成千上百款应用所要应对的一个小小营销挑战。曝光是推动应用发展的好途径，当然也是许多公司发展计划当中必不可少的内容。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Mobile App Discovery Is a Developer Problem, Not a Consumer Problem

By Charles Hudson

[Editor's note: Charles Hudson is a co-author on our Inside Virtual Goods series of industry reports, a co-founder of Android game developer Bionic Panda Games and a partner at SoftTech VC. This blog post was originally published on his site here.]

In my dual roles as a Venture Partner at SoftTech VC and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, I’ve met with a bunch of companies and teams who are focusing on trying to solve the problem of mobile application discovery. Simply put, the problem (as articulated by people trying to solve it) is that there are many more interesting applications out there than the typical consumer can find on his or her own. If you look at the number of apps in the Apple or Android markets, that’s probably true – no consumer can be fully aware of everything out there that could be of interest.

By and large, the teams I’ve met are incredibly smart, clever teams of people who I think will impact the world of mobile applications in positive ways. But after having met with a handful of really great folks working in this space, I’m becoming convinced that application discovery is a bigger problem for those applications looking to get discovered than it is for consumers looking for useful or entertaining applications. Three things I’d like to throw out there for discussion:

1. There is a lot of mobile application discovery that happens face-to-face in the real world and will probably never show up in your application analytics system. If you’ve gone out in a major city lately, I’m sure you’ve seen this happen. Someone pulls out a phone and shows off an application. Someone else at the table says, “Wow, that’s a cool application – I’m going to get it right now.” And that person starts downloading the application. That’s the beauty of the the combination of app stores, smartphones, and reasonably good data connections – if you find a new application you want, you can get it nearly instantly. No more waiting until you get home to have a friend invite you or send you an email. Just grab the app in context and grow. I’m not sure that there’s an opportunity for an app to help facilitate that face-to-face communication.

To most analytics systems, these installs will look largely organic (someone just installed your app and it didn’t come from a trackable link of any sort) even though they aren’t. And, as a developer, it’s kind of hard to know how often this is happening for any given application. It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway – lots of people will instantly install applications that their friends are using when this discovery happens face-to-face as your friend can often tell you (in his or her own words) why he or she likes the application and how he or she uses it. That counts for a lot for most people.

2. Most consumers are not actively looking for new applications to download, but will download them in order to get something else or based on the recommendation of a friend. I just don’t think most people sit around thinking about applications to discover. Most people are busy doing other things – reading, playing with the applications they already have, chatting with friends, etc. However, as I mentioned above, I do think that there is value in knowing what applications your social graph is using. For example, if you’re trying to make a decision on installing an app with strong network effects (any social networking or communications application, for example), knowing what your friends use has real value. For example, if most of your friends have standardized on using a particular location-sharing, photo-sharing, social networking, or other social application, knowing that can and probably should influence your choice of application to use.

The other use case is the incentivized install use case. If people are using an application and can get a reward in that application for downloading or installing someone else’s application, it shouldn’t be surprising that they are willing to do so – installing an application doesn’t really cost most users anything (other than the space on the device and the time required to install it) and the act of installing an application is a known behavior.

3. Open question – will consumers fire up an application to help them find other applications? One question I have is around how application discovery is delivered as a product. A number of the products in the space today involve opening or installing an application in order to discover additional applications to use. I am not sure this is the model that consumers want, but it’s still too early to tell.

Despite everything I’ve said above, application discovery is a problem for application developers. It’s really just a subset of the marketing challenge we all face in standing out in a sea of tens of thousands of applications that exist in app stores – being discovered is a good way to grow an application and absolutely essential in the growth plans of many companies.（Source：insidemobileapps）