Friday, January 16, 2009

Scrabulous (oops Lexulous) offers a mobile version

Mobile is hot. And the movement of social to mobile is even hotter. But I did not expect Lexulous to offer a mobile version. And I did not expect that mobile version to be incompatible with iPhone and Blackberry.

Here's the scoop as stated on the Lexulous app:


And I'd never expect them to incentivize invites. The Agarwalla Bros have always been scrupulous about obeying the letter and even more the intent of FB's platform policies. I am correct in thinking that offering a mobile version for inviting 30 friends is an incentive, right?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

iPhone Current Demographics - Gender

There's a pretty strong data (albeitly indirect) that most current iPhone owners are men 25-35.

However, if you take a look at the current traffic to buyiphone.apple.com (Apple's info portal for buying an iPhone), you'll see that 48% of the visitors are women (according to Quantcast).

Tracking back 6 months, I found that Hitwise did a similar analysis and found the traffic was nearly 50/50.

I haven't been able to find any good current demographic data regarding gender on the iPhone, if anyone has a good link, let me know.

I'm not sure if I find this data conclusive, but I suspect that with the price of the iPhone dropping we will see the percentage of female owning growing (men are much less price sensitive when it comes to gadget purchases).

I'd say if I was building an app for the iPhone for a release in the next 3-6 months, I'd stay focused on the male demographics.

Here's some more demographic data, mostly income. (http://theappleblog.com/2008/11/24/profile-of-an-iphone-user-interesting-statistics-about-yourself/)

And I'd charge money. :)

Friday, January 9, 2009

I'm Back, and so is Scrabulous!

Hey all.

Then blogging break extended further, but I'm emerging from the darkness to note that Scrabulous is back as Lexulous. It's currently at 38,000 DAU.

As many of you know, Hasbro dropped their lawsuit against Scrabulous a couple of weeks ago.

Will Scrabulous/Lexulous get back its 600,000+ DAU? Doubtful. It's much harder to stand out from the noise on the Facebook platform nowadays.

I'm guessing that it'll hit 100,000 DAU by March 15. That's a total gut call. It's still the best Scrabble game on Facebook, it'll get much of its audience back.

However, the gameplay has been altered slightly. The scoring squares are in different locations. You get eight tiles instead of 7. Those are the two I noticed at a quick glance. There's likely to be more differences

Whatever, I'm happy for Rajat and Jayant. They built an awesome game and people can enjoy it again.