A social aggregation app.Social Feed
Among the first 1,000 apps on the App Store, built at fourteen: every feed a person followed pulled into one timeline.
Every feed I followed in one timeline: a friend's Facebook post, a tweet, a sports score, a LinkedIn update. I was fourteen.
I shipped it at fourteen and 598,000 people were using it inside thirty days. I learned distribution and iteration while it was already live, because the App Store had no playbook yet.
Why it mattered
The problem
In 2009 everything I followed was scattered across separate apps, and keeping up with any of it meant opening every one of them in turn. I wanted it in a single feed.
The approach
I wrote one client that pulled the separate social feeds into a single timeline, then shipped it to the App Store myself at fourteen.
What held up
Social Feed reached 598,000 users in the first thirty days, went on to millions of downloads, took the top spot in its App Store category, and made $110,000.
Looking back
Then
I was using the first App Store apps twelve hours a day and I wanted one timeline that held a friend's Facebook post, a tweet, a sports score and a LinkedIn update, so I built it.
Now
I was fourteen, and 598,000 people used it in the first thirty days. That is where I learned distribution.
What stayed with me
I shipped it at fourteen and 598,000 people were using it inside thirty days. I learned distribution and iteration while it was already live, because the App Store had no playbook yet.