Category: Apps

Mobile apps ad partnership spikes Twitter stock price

The micro-blogging social network has taken a heavy focus on advertising on smartphones and tablets.

Twitter experienced a considerable jump in its stock price – initially leaping by over 6 percent – when it announced that it would be adding promoted tweets on third party mobile apps, as well as smartphone friendly websites, as a part of a broader advertising distribution program that it has now launched.

This new mobile advertising strategy is designed to help to broaden the reach of the social network’s ads.

This will allow Twitter to be able to reach into other mobile apps and websites in order to place ads in front of a much larger number of viewers. It will expand the number of potential ad viewers well beyond the 284 million estimated users who actively use the micro-blogging service every month. The first partners that have joined with Twitter in this advertising program include Yahoo Japan and the Flipboard newsreader app.

There are already thousands of brands that advertise on Twitter and they could now benefit from ads on additional mobile apps.

Mobile Apps - Twitter Stock Price IncreaseAccording to a post that Twitter added to its official blog, “For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience.”

This announcement was made very shortly before the financial results for the fourth quarter were announced by the company. The stock price has been facing some considerable pressure over the last while. In fact, when compared to its 52 week high point that brought it to $67.24, it has faced a drop of a whopping 40 percent. This meant that the 6.5 percent increase that it saw at the initial announcement of its new third party advertising partnerships was an especially welcome change from the direction that it had been taking.

This is believed to be only the start of the partnerships that will be forming between Twitter and various mobile apps and websites around the world. It will be interesting to watch as new applications come aboard and to view the impact that this will have on the stock price over time.

Angry Birds takes on mobile gaming puzzles

Rovio’s most popular app could now be taking on Candy Crush as it jumps into a new game category.

When it comes to the mobile gaming industry, Angry Birds continues to hold its position among the most popular app series in the world, but at the same time, it isn’t even approaching the financial successes that are seen by puzzle based options such as Candy Crush Saga.

The Angry Birds developer has now decided to that its mobile games will be closer to Puzzle & Dragons.

Rovio has not been blind to the match-three puzzle style mobile gaming apps and it has now soft-launched two new games in the Angry Birds series that have dumped their traditional bird slingshot style play for, yes, themed match-three puzzles. Angry Birds Fight! has now been made available in Thailand, while Angry Birds Stella Pop! is available to Canadian downloaders.

Mobile gaming developers have been using single country debuts as a type of standard for testing their apps.

Mobile Gaming - Angry Birds - Image from amusement parkThe mobile app developers use these single country releases to be able to refine their new games before they are ready to launch them worldwide. According to recent reports from early downloaders, the style of the newest Angry Bird match-three puzzle games is that of “freemium” applications, in which they can be downloaded and played for free, but where there are in-app purchases for virtual items available to players who want to enhance their experience.

The Angry Birds Fight! version of the game involves having to match three or more birds in a line in order to be able to combat enemies – somewhat similar to the highly popular Puzzle & Dragons game from the GungHo Online app developer based in Japan.

On the other hand, the Angry Birds Stella Pop! is more comparable to the Puzzle Bobble (also known as Bust-a-Move) console classic bubble popping game, or to the more recent mobile gaming app from King (maker of Candy Crush), which is called the Bubble Witch Saga. This move will be a defining one for Rovio, which still holds onto considerable popularity with its Angry Birds app, but that has been watching that popularity slide since late 2012.