A lot of companies do this, where they force users into an "app" workflow.
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A lot of companies do this, where they force users into an "app" workflow. And I've seen some commentators brush this off as like, the apps letting you collect more data, or something. But honestly I don't see how that makes sense. You can hoover up plenty of data on the web, and is it really worth the *massive* app store tax (either Google or Apple) to get a little more data for a company with *direct paying customers*, data whose value is marginal at best?
Anil Dash (@[email protected])
I rarely use ride-sharing apps because they're destructive to public infrastructure I care about, but recently I had to use Lyft and YOU CAN'T USE IT ON THE WEB. Their website literally tells you to go get the app, so you can't use a desktop browser at all to access their platform. That is an absolutely *wild* choice, and even more absurd that it goes unnoticed in the current media/tech ecosystem.
me.dm by Medium.com (me.dm)
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I've seen various pop-sci explainers and offhand comments from developers gesturing at "data" or "sensors" or whatever but honestly I've never seen a breakdown that balanced that equation, or financials from a company that illustrated why they think this data is so valuable, and my peripheral knowledge of the domain leads me to estimate that they're overvaluing the data by like 10x. To be clear, I do NOT have sufficient experience to be confident in that estimate!
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But I'd love to see a real in-depth analysis where someone goes over not just "mumble mumble data, mumble mumble notifications, mumble mumble 'engagement'" but says like (hypothetically), here are our NPS scores for app vs. website, we want users to have a good experience, the experience is 30% better on the app; or, we value the data at $X for this list of concrete reasons, app store tax is $Y, $X >> $Y
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@glyph Well, there is also mumble mumble performance that @slightlyoff writes extensively about
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