We’re experiencing a new era of creation. Software development and deployment is low cost, authoring comes at the cost of your time, and sharing is free. With these lowered barriers to entry has come a fire hose of new content and there’s not one of us who doesn’t feel like we’re now drinking from that fire hose. As content continues to grow across the web and accessibility becomes ubiquitous through smartphones, the challenge of efficient discoverability will continue to increase. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in mobile app discovery.
The mobile app market is growing at rates that are unprecedented as the number of global smart phone subscribers rapidly approaches 1 billion. Apple leads the way with more than 650,000 apps, Android adds another 500,000 and RIM has 100,000. This proliferation of apps is overwhelming for subscribers looking to find those apps that are relevant. It's simply not possible for even the most curious of users to find those relevant apps; enter AppHero.
AppHero helps you discover new apps based on a combination of your social graph and behavior to push to you those apps that are most relevant. It's not the volume of apps that is important to consumers, but rather the relevancy of their apps. AppHero has built a discovery engine that makes it simple for users to discover what is useful and relevant to them as an individual.
At OMERS Ventures, we’re excited about this type of solution – it’s part of the evolution of the mobile web. AppHero is a solution that you don't need to interact with moment by moment, but one that is working for you while you go about your normal activities and interactions. This idea of passive productivity is applicable in many areas and one that the team at AppHero has embodied in their mobile discovery platform.
The AppHero team has been working on this technology for over five years and we feel fortunate to become part of their team. Download AppHero from the App Store and check out AppHero's careers page if you’re interested in working on the growing challenge of mobile discovery.
Derek Smyth, Managing Director, OMERS Ventures @derekjsmyth