Publishers who distribute content, media and applications on the web want to understand how, where and by whom their assets are being consumed. This is a question very often answered by Google Analytics, a tool based on JavaScript and Cockies to track user behavior on the web that comes bundled with a nice analytics service and reporting engine to draw conclusions out of the collected data. Some people argue that the analytics are not all actionable or do not lead to any actions, but Google is the most popular today – by far.
With the mobile web finally becoming a reality thanks to the iPhone, the distribution channels of digital assets to consumers today include not only mobile sites but more and more also mobile applications and especially iPhone applications. For the consumer the difference between the two is small and sometimes even not noticed, but for distributors of content moving to iPhone applications is quite a change when it comes to analytics. For websites optimized to show on the iPhones web browser one can rely on the same tracking and analytics functionality from Google. But iPhone applications are not supported.
Quite early in time, Pinch Media started providing an analytics library and service very similar to Google Analytics that can be used for user tracking in iPhone applications.
Pinch Analytics is software that collects anonymous usage data from mobile phone applications, and presents it in aggregated form. <..> Using Pinch Analytics will provide you with information about how your application is being used, which you can then use to improve and enhance it.
So Pinch Media is really a Google Analytics for the iPhone and they also track the same type of data. But also since the revelation of the Palm Pre collecting user data and constantly updating the vendor about them, the community seems to see this differently. The current conversation considers tracking user behavior in iPhone apps spying on them and using their bandwidth for the tracked data stealing from them. Two of the differences are an assumed less anonymous character of a device id of the iPhone over an IP address and the higher accuracy of a geo location based on real latitude and longitude and not just the location of your provider IP location.
The German newspaper Die Zeit also considers Pinch Media spyware and suggests a firewall for the iPhone. At least the blocking part of such a firewall is now available to users of cracked iPhones through Jay Freeman’s privaCy tool.
Pinch Media have in the mean time reacted and now also offer a version of their tool with an extended option for users to opt-out of the user tracking. And this requires the developers to update the existing iPhone apps.
I am sure a lot of developers will update their apps and carefully consider whether to use analytics libraries or not in the future. The is in line with the typical patterns of the consumerized mobile and web business and this is good. But I do not like the term spyware. Wikipedia says about Spyware:
Spyware is known to change computer settings, resulting in slow connection speeds, different home pages, and/or loss of Internet or functionality of other programs.
Pinch media is able to derive relevant conclusions out of their intelligence that do not harm the user but help the developer of the application.
An approach I really like is the one of Twitterfon. They have a free and a commercial version of their app and for the free one they expect their users to agree to sharing some of their data. Get something for free but give something back that does not cost you anything that can be valuable for the vendor.
What do you think?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for linking to my article about Google Analytics not being all that actionable. I really like your blog and hope to talk with you a lot more in the near future.
Thanks Sebastian,
Brad
{ 2 trackbacks }