0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:08an iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number 174. Today is
0:00:14Wednesday, February 12th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's
0:00:18get started. All right, a couple of different things I'm going to be walking through today,
0:00:21but a lot of them are coming out of the experience of this weekend and the floppy bird saga that
0:00:27ensued. And I'm not necessarily going to go into all the details of that, because I imagine
0:00:30if you were on the internet at all, or have an iPhone, you were part of this, where this
0:00:35gentleman from Vietnam, Thần Nhộn, put together a very simple application, published
0:00:40it I think a couple months ago, and then all of a sudden it just sort of blew up and became
0:00:43this wild, kind of viral success, and then had this very kind of tragic end. And just
0:00:50because there were a couple of lessons that I wanted to kind of unpack from that. I'm
0:00:55not necessarily to talk about the specifics of it, but just try and pull out some broader
0:00:59lessons and some things that worried me and things that made me think about. The first
0:01:04thing was just kind of how unsettling it was over the weekend to see the hate or the way
0:01:14that people were reacting and responding, both personally to this gentleman as well
0:01:19as just generally how there's this, this, you know, this sort of this Twitter and I
0:01:24guess in general, this this internet mindset of that grows up around having a very short
0:01:28attention span, feeling like, you know, there's you're instantaneously expected to sort of
0:01:32be passing judgment on people to understand as I'm trying to pull out, you know, these
0:01:37deep motives and passing judgment and being, you know, why they do things, why are they
0:01:41doing this thing? Are you pulling all this information out of, you know, 140 character
0:01:45message from somebody you don't know. And I just found that very unsettling over the
0:01:50weekend. And some of these people that I trust and admire were talking in ways about somebody
0:01:56they didn't know. It just seemed very, I don't know, it's worrying or inappropriate, but
0:02:02at the same time I don't necessarily want to be on the flip side, hypocrite of saying
0:02:05passing judgment on other people, passing judgment of other people. But it just seemed
0:02:09very unsettling to me. And it was kind of depressing over the weekend to see how much
0:02:13people were just very willing and open and able to just immediately sort of go after
0:02:17somebody and be, you know, sort of acting and assuming as though they knew this guy,
0:02:22knew what was going on, knew his motives, knew what was going on in his life personally.
0:02:27And that somehow that gave them the ability to judge and explain what was going on in
0:02:35his life or what he should be doing or those types of things.
0:02:38And that's not to say there's no place in the world for criticism.
0:02:41I think that by and large, the praise publicly criticized privately kind of approach that
0:02:49I think is more like a conventional wisdom, I think is a great place to start.
0:02:53So trying to understand that people are complicated, they're fragile, they're valuable, and the
0:02:58way in which the words that you used towards them or about them are important.
0:03:03They're not just, you know, you can't just say whatever you want and expect that there
0:03:09is no implication and there is no impact. And I mean, there's no greater example of
0:03:13this, I think, and to get a sense of just how dramatically and negatively this gentleman's
0:03:20life was impacted by the words of others. It's just kind of as a sobering example and
0:03:24a reminder, I think, and something that I wanted to talk about on the show, because
0:03:28it's where I can be a bit more nuanced and honest about these types of things. It was
0:03:34just something that I was, as the weekend was going on, and I was seeing more and more
0:03:37I mean, somebody just deleted Twitter off my phone for a while and just like got away
0:03:41from it because it was just very depressing and sad that, you know, the community I follow
0:03:45and the people that I think about, you know, who are all very interested in, you know,
0:03:50app development, who here's somebody who's had this wild success out of something that
0:03:54he made.
0:03:55And whatever you think about, you know, its individual merits on a variety of measures,
0:04:01it still was something that he made that was wildly successful in creating a tremendous
0:04:04amount of interest and popularity.
0:04:07And that, you know, it's like, I don't know if it's jealousy, I don't know what it is,
0:04:10but to then feel like we have to just attack that and tear it apart, that doesn't seem
0:04:15productive.
0:04:16That doesn't seem useful, you know, like projecting into someone else's situation, and then like
0:04:19passing judgment on how they're responding to it.
0:04:22That isn't really productive.
0:04:23I mean, the productive things to try and think about, and this is what I try and do, is to
0:04:26say, "What if that happened to me?
0:04:28How would I respond?"
0:04:29You project yourself into their situation, and then try and learn something from yourself.
0:04:34It reminds me actually of one of my favorite books, it's The King of Torts by John Grisham,
0:04:40which I won't necessarily go into, it's an interesting read.
0:04:43But it's a story of this guy who's a lawyer who through a variety of means comes into
0:04:48a lot of money all of a sudden through his work and how that gradually sort of eats at
0:04:53him and destroys him.
0:04:54What I find useful about it is that it's a way to kind of think through how would you
0:04:59respond to that situation, what would that be?
0:05:01And if that's something that you're driving towards, and I know a lot of, you know, it's
0:05:04something that I think about less and less, but for a while, I know when I was starting
0:05:07out, my goal was to make money.
0:05:08That was what I wanted to do.
0:05:09It was all about, you know, sort of all about the Benjamins, I suppose you could say.
0:05:13And the reality I think that I've come to is how sort of insidious and destructive that
0:05:17kind of a mentality can be.
0:05:20And so just some things that I've been thinking about that sort of came out of what happened
0:05:24this weekend.
0:05:25And there is one thing that I've sort of, I think, more germane to this audience that
0:05:29also came out of it.
0:05:30it's an article by Jeff Vogel, who is, as best I can tell, someone in the game industry
0:05:35who's gone through experiences like this before of having a lot of negative public
0:05:39sort of negative reaction personally towards him for the things he's created. And one,
0:05:45the article is definitely worth a read and it's linked in the show notes. But I definitely
0:05:49thought that it was interesting that he had this, this observation about why bigger companies
0:05:55have PR faces to them. And while that can often come across as impersonal, as cold,
0:06:02as calculating, et cetera, there is something about it that is intrinsically valuable. That
0:06:08creating a separation between the public and the creator is valuable insofar as having
0:06:17direct interaction with your customers, which is one of the biggest attributes of being
0:06:20independent.
0:06:21That if something goes wrong with one of my apps or with one of my services, people contact
0:06:25me directly. You know, they're not emailing, you know, they're not even support@crossforward.com,
0:06:29which is, you know, some people do. There's a lot of people who will email me, you know,
0:06:33David@developmentperspective.com, they'll reach out to me directly and have some choice words for me.
0:06:38That's, that's good. And that's bad. I mean, I can be more responsive, I can be more
0:06:43reactive to my customers, which I guess has a value which could be useful. But at the same time,
0:06:48if you aren't thoughtful about the boundaries that you're drawing around yourself and the way
0:06:52way you interact with, I guess, your public or your customer base or whatever you want
0:06:56to call it, you might kind of go crazy because human nature is to always sort of emphasize
0:07:03the negative. You know, you can have the classic thing is you can have 50 or 100 people say,
0:07:07"This was great. This was great. This was great." Then one person says, "I hate it.
0:07:11It's terrible. I wish you never existed." And you're going to hold on to that far more
0:07:16strongly than you will anything else. And that's just human nature. That's just the
0:07:20the way that we react to the world.
0:07:24And so, I mean, in my own life, that's things that I've had to do where I have put--
0:07:28I have someone who does my first tier customer service for me,
0:07:31so they can filter through a lot of that where it's not personal for them.
0:07:34It's not something that they've put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into in quite
0:07:38the same way, so that when someone criticizes it in an aggressive, unkind way,
0:07:42it doesn't affect them in quite the same way.
0:07:44And you just have to be very thoughtful about this.
0:07:46be careful because this is the extreme, exaggerated form of this, what happened with Floppy Bird,
0:07:53but the same thing applies, I've seen, for many, many people, that you can get, sort of creating
0:07:59this direct connection between you and your audience is very much a double-edged sword,
0:08:03that you have to be very careful about how you apply it, or you'll end up just in a really,
0:08:07really bad place. And that's just somewhere I've been, and it's a lesson that I wanted to
0:08:12to reiterate here just to make sure that people think about it. And you have to be thoughtful.
0:08:17And it's easy when you're starting out when you're smaller to just sort of enjoy it in
0:08:22some ways. But if you're not careful, it could come back to bite you later.
0:08:28One thing also, this is more of a tangential lesson, but it's something I wanted to talk
0:08:32about is how -- one of the things that I noticed most dramatically in this, and there's a lot
0:08:37of squishy lessons, there's a lot of things coming out of this situation that I think
0:08:41are useful and things I just talked about even. But there's one thing that I came out of it that
0:08:46I definitely wanted to emphasize. And it was the most concrete example I've ever had of something
0:08:51that I've thought for a very long time, and I think I've even done past episodes about, is
0:08:55the importance of never, ever, ever, under no circumstances, ever, ever, ever share
0:09:01revenue numbers publicly. There's something that's unique about throwing out numbers about money
0:09:10publicly because people's natural reaction is different to when you talk about the revenue
0:09:17that you make than it is to almost any other attribute or metric or measure of your application.
0:09:22And I think it's to do that when you talk about money it is directly comparable to other people's
0:09:28situations. That if I can say an app has so many downloads, now if you're an app developer you
0:09:34might have some kind of comparison to that personally, but by and large it's a bit more
0:09:38complicated and nuanced. Whereas if I say I'm making X dollars from an app in whatever
0:09:43period of time, people are going to immediately compare that to what they're making and can
0:09:48directly say, you know, sort of hold on to that. And in my experience, that's all people
0:09:54will talk about. You know, it's fascinating how out of all the articles that were written
0:09:59about Don Nguyen, every single one of them immediately starts talking about, as soon
0:10:04as he mentioned what he was making in advertising revenue, that's all they were talking about
0:10:07It was always in the first couple paragraphs.
0:10:09It's always talking about how much money he's making, how much money he's making, how much
0:10:12money he's making.
0:10:13And part of me wonders how this would have gone if he hadn't done that.
0:10:17If he had just, even if he had just said, "Yeah, the app's very popular.
0:10:20It's doing very well."
0:10:21And that would be frustrating as an audience in some ways, and especially as the news media,
0:10:24you know, because the news media wants that sensational headline.
0:10:27But it's something that I've seen over time and time again, that as soon as there's a
0:10:31money number thrown out, that it's all people can latch onto and focus on, and it's almost
0:10:37never productive. You know, there's just it's a very venomous type of a thing for people to do,
0:10:41because either they're saying, oh, you're not making nearly enough, or you're making way too
0:10:45much, or whatever. It's this very direct and comparable thing that everyone can sort of latch
0:10:50on to. And this is coming from somebody who tries very hard to share numbers and stats and results.
0:10:56You know, part of what I think has made this podcast and some of the work I've done popular
0:11:00in the community is that I try very hard to share numbers. And I know it can be frustrating
0:11:04when I publish things that have no y-axis.
0:11:06That's the classic example.
0:11:07You have a growth chart, or you have an example of something
0:11:10I'll talk about in a minute.
0:11:12You'll have these charts and graphs
0:11:14that have no y-axis numbers.
0:11:15But I think that's an important distinction to make,
0:11:18and an important line to draw that you
0:11:21want to try and, as best you can,
0:11:23to not share things like that publicly.
0:11:25It's just some advice that I have,
0:11:28something that I've tried very hard to do myself,
0:11:30and that I've seen time and time again that whenever you do,
0:11:33it either will come across as bragging or it'll come back to bite you,
0:11:36and neither of which is a great situation.
0:11:38Alright, one other thing I wanted to talk about briefly,
0:11:41just more as a pointer,
0:11:42if you've listened to this show for a couple of weeks,
0:11:45you'll know I've been doing a series about localization,
0:11:47and I've been talking about localizing Pedometer++.
0:11:50I just wanted to mention, and there's a link in the show notes,
0:11:53that I've done a bit of a breakdown on the impact of localizing the app
0:11:56now that I have reasonable data before and after,
0:11:59and by and large, it's been very successful.
0:12:01You know, my downloads in non-US countries are up by about 300%.
0:12:06Overall downloads up by about 50%.
0:12:09And who knows if that would apply to you and your app and your app's situation.
0:12:12But generally, I was very impressed with it.
0:12:14And if you want more details, go look in that blog post in the show notes.
0:12:18And then lastly, it's just something that I was kind of curious about.
0:12:21And I was hesitant to do this.
0:12:23But it's something I've been thinking about for a while.
0:12:25And I figured, well, I'll just do it.
0:12:26because the quantitative part of me is just so curious and sort of itching about what
0:12:33the impact would be. And that is, I listen to a lot of podcasts and in dozens and dozens
0:12:38of shows, often probably a couple times a week, I hear something along the lines of,
0:12:41you know, please go read us on iTunes. It's very helpful. Please go read us on iTunes.
0:12:45It's very helpful. It's great for the show. It's important. And it's something I've never
0:12:50done as far as I know. There's, I think there's 48 reviews in iTunes right now for the show,
0:12:54I appreciate, which I enjoy reading. I think Developing Perspective is actually my best
0:12:58reviewed thing I've ever created, which I'm kind of proud of. But it's something I've
0:13:02ever really solicited. But I've always been curious if that was actually true, that when
0:13:07all these hosts are saying go to iTunes and rate it, that that is actually important.
0:13:10And so I was curious, and just as a bit of an experiment, if you would humor me, if you
0:13:14enjoy the show, if you listen to the show, you know, if it's something that you were
0:13:16able to do, if you could go to iTunes and write a review for it, I'm just very curious
0:13:21if that would actually have any impact on the audience and the downloads, on whatever
0:13:25for the show.
0:13:26And there's enough of you who listen to the show that I think it would have a pretty dramatic
0:13:29impact if you all went and in the next few days wrote a review.
0:13:33If it's going to do anything, I think it's a large enough sample size to potentially
0:13:38see if there is actually an impact.
0:13:40Because I've always been wondering, I've always been curious if when people are saying that
0:13:44it's just about building brand loyalty, that if you go and write a review about something
0:13:48and you're putting your words and your affirmations about something publicly, you feel more connected
0:13:53to it, which may be true, I don't know, or if there's actually a tangible and measurable
0:13:57impact on something else coming out of that. So if you have some time, there's a link in
0:14:02the show notes to get it in iTunes or if you just go to iTunes and search "development
0:14:05perspective," I'm sure you could find it. And I'd appreciate just you taking that minute
0:14:09just so I can kind of run this experiment and put my mind at ease about if there's actually
0:14:14something to that. And that's it for today's show. As always, if you have questions, comments,
0:14:18concerns, complaints, compliments, whatever it is, you can find me on Twitter. I'm @_davidsmith.
0:14:24You can email me, david@developingperspective.com. And otherwise, I hope you have a great rest
0:14:28of this week. If you're on the East Coast of the US, I hope you stay warm in this crazy storm that's
0:14:32about to come and hit us. And otherwise, happy coding, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.