DiscoveryBeat 2009 | Application discovery in an age of noise | December 8, 2009 | San Francisco, CA

DiscoveryBeat is an event focused on the “secret recipe” for application discovery and the opportunity to create the relationships needed to succeed.

Don’t fool yourself. Getting your app discovered has little to do with luck, and everything to do with strategy. From mobile to social, we’ve watched developers go from startup to stardom, while the vast majority of apps sit in a store somewhere, unknown and undiscovered. Given the variety of platforms, complexity of guidelines, and need for constant agility, today’s entrepreneus must be equipped with bullet-proof strategies and real-world tactics from the get-go. DiscoveryBeat will break through the typical conference-speak and give attendees the chance to look under the hood of today’s hottest, most successful apps.

You’ll learn:

• •  Starting from Scratch: Crafting a Killer Playbook to Get Discovered in an Age of Noise
• •  Discovery 2.0: Avoiding a One-Hit Wonder and Building a High-Growth Company
• •  Discovery 3.0: How Gaming and Entertainment Giants can Leverage App Startups

Speakers

Sebastien de Halleux COO, Playfish	Julian Farrior CEO, Backflip Studios	Roy Sehgal GM, Zynga	Ge Wang Co-Founder, CTO, & CCO, Smule	John Pleasants CEO, Playdom	Jon Vlassopulos CEO, Moderati
Randy Angle Dir. of Game Design, SGN	Peter Farago VP Marketing, Flurry	Alex St. John President & CTO, hi5	Michael Chang Founder & CEO, Greystripe	Neil Young Founder & CEO, ngmoco	Lisa Marino VP Sales, RockYou
Matt Marshall Editor in Chief, VentureBeat	Dean Takahashi Lead Writer for GamesBeat, VentureBeat	Roy Bahat President, IGN Entertainment

Presentations

Make or Break: How to successfully leverage publicity and social media to drive awareness and downloads of mobile apps
Presenter: Vijay S. Chattha (Chief Talker, VSC Consulting & AppLaunchPR)
350 million mobile content and application downloads later, Vijay’s firm, VSC/AppLaunchPR, has learned a thing or two about App discovery. This session will highlight parts of his proprietary model of app marketing which includes a bulletproof checklist on marketing essentials. The session will also highlight the Do’s and Dont’s of App marketing including social media marketing, focus groups, advertising, goal-setting and media relations.

Should Driving App Discovery Require Hemorrhaging Money?
Presenter: Simon Khalaf (President & CEO, Flurry)
In the App Store, only 100 apps are listed in “Top 50” and “Featured” categories at any given time. With over 100,000 available apps, this means that less than one tenth of one percent can be found easily by consumers. The other 99.9% are at a disadvantage to attract downloads. Considering discovery options, the story gets worse. The main alternative, in-app advertising, delivers negative ROI. That’s because the cost-per-acquisition of advertising often exceeds what developers make per application download. Developers have a choice: spend at a loss or choose not to spend. Flurry will present AppCircle: a better, ROI-positive way to solve App Store discovery.

Social Gaming: The Evolving Technology Platform & Monetization (view presentation here)
Presenter: Peter Relan (Founder & Chairman, YouWeb)
Peter will focus on the social gaming space, including current and future trends, monetization, business models and technology platform evolution. His talk will be interspersed with examples and real life stories from the successful growth of his companies in the social gaming space including CrowdStar, Aurora Feint/OpenFeint and Sibblingz.

Building Social Games: Games at the Speed of Light (view presentation here)
Presenter: Bill Mooney (VP, Zynga; GM, FarmVille)
The social gaming market is exploding - viral propagation across the world, low barriers to entry which create agile competitors, and a rapidly changing and imperfectly understood marketplace. Bill walks through key learnings from his time making Zynga franchises Mafia Wars and FarmVille.

Super-sizing the app economy by extending it beyond the iPhone (view presentation here)
Presenter: Chris Dury (VP Product, GetJar)
Giant app businesses grew on the Facebook platform but so far the iPhone hasn’t produced a single Zynga-like success. So what is needed to super-size the mobile app economy? Dury will talk about the key ingredients of successful platforms in the app economy: scale, discovery, and payments. GetJar operates the world’s largest independent mobile app store.

Agenda

Discovery 1.0: Starting from scratch

With more than 119,000 apps in the Apple AppStore, discovery is a huge problem. Facebook is just as tough. And to make it worse, you’re at a disadvantage because large networks have the upper hand of experience in platform strategy and a louder voice to get their products heard.

• If you’re a two-person garage development shop and starting from scratch, how do you create an app that can go viral?
• If you’re not a giant company, how do you exploit your newness and focus, using the key ingredients of success?
• How can the smaller developers team up with bigger brands that have name recognition? When should they go it alone?
• How do they build a company that bigger investors will notice?
• What are some of the platform tools at your disposal that can be used to get your apps noticed?
• How does discovery fit with the right business model for your app?

Panelists:
• Randy Angle (Director of Game Design, SGN)
• Julian Farrior (CEO, Backflip Studios)
• Ge Wang (Co-Founder, CTO, & COO, Smule - maker of Ocarina iPhone app)
• Peter Farago (VP Marketing, Flurry)

Moderator: Matt Marshall (Editor in Chief, VentureBeat)

Discovery 2.0: Moving to the next level

The social app companies, those successful application companies that came of age on Facebook and the iPhone, have created their own ecosystems with successful titles that feed on each other. Now what do they do?

• How many different types of monetization schemes do they need? What can they learn from the bigger companies?
• Should they recruit executives from the “old world” companies, to help with partnering or organizational discipline?
• What sort of analytics process should they have in place?
• Can anyone catch up with them?
• What will the social/mobile/gaming look like in two years?

Panelists:
• Sebastien De Halleux (COO, Playfish)
• John Pleasants (CEO, Playdom)
• Roy Sehgal (GM, Zynga & Executive Producer of Cafe World game)
• Neil Young (Founder & CEO, ngmoco)

Moderator: Dean Takahashi (Lead Writer for GamesBeat, VentureBeat)

Discovery 3.0: Bringing in the big guys

Established video game companies and entertainment giants are eyeing the social networking and mobile platforms as a source of future growth. For success, the big guys need to apply the secret ingredients in different proportions.

• How much should they invest in these areas, and how should they do it?
• Which kinds of partners should they recruit? Which business models are the best?
• Who has made the transition already?
• What’s the right mix of social networking, marketing, analytical measurement, advertising and web design ingredients they should apply?

Panelists:
• Jon Vlassopulos (CEO, Moderati - maker of the virtual light Zippo iPhone app)
• Alex St. John (President & CTO, hi5)
• Michael Chang (Founder & CEO, Greystripe)
• Lisa Marino (VP Sales, RockYou)

Moderator: Roy Bahat (President, IGN Entertainment)

Schedule

DiscoveryBeat will be held on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 from 2:30pm to 7:30pm.

2:30pm - 3:00pm | Registration
3:00pm - 3:05pm | Welcome
3:05pm - 3:15pm | “Make or Break: How to successfully leverage publicity and social media to drive awareness and downloads of mobile apps”
3:15pm - 3:30pm | “Should driving app discovery require hemorrhaging money?”
3:30pm - 3:45pm | “Social Gaming: The evolving technology platform & monetization”
3:45pm - 4:00pm | “Building Social Games: Games at the speed of light”
4:00pm - 4:40pm | “Discovery 1.0: Starting from scratch”
4:40pm - 4:55pm | “Super-sizing the app economy by moving it beyond the iPhone”
4:55pm - 5:35pm | “Discovery 2.0: Moving to the next level”
5:35pm - 6:00pm | “Discovery 3.0: Bringing in the big guys”
6:00pm - 6:05pm | Closing remarks
6:05pm - 7:30pm | Reception

Attendees

150-200 mobile and gaming applications developers and entrepreneurs, VCs, top executives from telecom and technology infrastructure companies, content and social media executives, marketers and media. The open invitation will be promoted on VentureBeat.com and through our partners.

Sponsors

For sponsorships, contact Andie Rhyins at andie@venturebeat.com.

Flurry
Flurry provides cutting-edge analytics, discovery and monetization solutions for mobile applications. Apps with Flurry Analytics, a free solution, can be found on two thirds of all iPhone and Android handsets. AppCircle, a solution to iPhone app discovery, leverages the reach of Flurry Analytics to drive new user acquisition and increase revenue for application developers. Flurry is venture-backed and based in San Francisco.

Zynga
Zynga is the largest social gaming company with over 200 million monthly active users and over 100 million unique monthly users. Zynga’s games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, Bebo, Friendster, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Roller Coaster Kingdom, Café World, FishVille, and recently launched PetVille. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Zynga is headquartered in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.

AppLaunchPR
There’s no question that app developers need a cost-effective way to generate awareness. We’re not all lucky enough to be on stage with Steve Jobs or appear in a TV commercial. That’s why VSC Consulting created AppLaunchPR, a specialized public relations division focused on driving awareness and downloads of iPhone apps. Over the past seven years, VSC has launched mobile applications across every major smartphone platform, carrier and website.

GetJar
GetJar is the world’s largest cross platform app store with over a half billion downloads to date. The company provides more than 50,000 mobile applications across all major handsets and platforms to consumers in more than 200 countries. In June of this year, GetJar was named winner of the 2009 Meffy Award for Best Direct to Consumer Service. GetJar is backed by marquee investor Accel Partners and is based in the UK, Silicon Valley and Lithuania. For more information, visit www.getjar.com and follow us on Twitter @getjar.

YouWeb
At YouWeb, an incubator based in Silicon Valley with offices in New York, entrepreneurs spend a year coming up with ideas, building technologies and products, and launching their own companies - typically in cloud computing, and consumer Internet and mobile computing sectors. YouWeb works with the best and brightest young technical talent in the industry to create new products and business models. Created by Peter Relan, a successful serial entrepreneur, Silicon Valley executive, angel investor and technology veteran, YouWeb has produced a series of market-defining companies including CrowdStar; home of the hugely popular Facebook social games “Happy Aquarium” and “Happy Pets:” plus the iPhone’s largest social gaming platform Aurora Feint/OpenFeint; and Sibblingz, the multi-channel social gaming platform for developers. You can learn more at www.YouWebinc.net.

SGN
Founded in March 2008, SGN is focused on the developing, designing and distributing immersive social mobile games to active gamers on social networks and the iPhone. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California with offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Beijing, China, SGN is known for building explosively popular multiplayer and multiplatform games such as (fluff)Friends, and hit applications for the iPhone and iPod touch including iBowl, F.A.S.T. and most recently Skies of Glory. Fueled by user traction and innovative technologies, SGN’s games command over 14 million downloads and are currently on one-third of Apple’s mobile device worldwide.