Posted by Colin Morris on Mon, Oct 10, 2011 @ 10:08 AM
We’re excited to bring you three, great features that will give you more insight into your users’ behavior within your app.
Lifecycle metrics allow you to group together a set of users by date and measure what the “rolling retention” of usage looks like over time. Of all the users who came in for the first time, how many of them are still around 3 months later? Understanding how quickly users drop off is crucial for developers as they assess the vitality of the product. Lifecycle metrics becomes even more powerful when filtered by a segment. Do females of a certain age range drop off from using my app faster than males? Do users who make an in-app purchase within my app stick around longer? Lifecycle metrics can be found as it’s own sub-tab under the Usage tab.
Time of Day Metrics help you understand when during the course of the day users come in or use your app the most. Do most of my users launch the app before 9AM? Is my app competing with other media options during primetime? Time of Day metrics represents a global view of all time zones relative to the end user. This can help inform when promotions should be launched with the hopes of hitting the largest audience, when the load on your server needs to be most carefully monitored, or when the most optimal window is for any necessary downtime from the back end. You can find the Time of Day button as a zoom option in the Active Users, New Users, and Sessions view.
Hourly Metrics gives you a more granular view into historical usage, which previously was only broken out by day. Now you can see more accurately when traffic spike occurred from being featured in the AppStore, trending from a topic, or explosive viral growth of your app. You can view this by Active Users, New Users, and Sessions. To Access this new feature, simply, look to the left of the “Days” button on the Zoom.
We hope you enjoy our new features, and, as always, we look forward to your feedback.
Cheers,
Colin
Posted by Colin Morris on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 @ 07:24 PM
Today we released version 2.0 of the Flurry Windows Phone SDK. This update ensures apps built with the latest release of Windows Phone (Mango) will continue to successfully report Analytics data. We’ve also added several powerful features that can help you better understand usage within your app, including:
- Device, Carrier and OS Metrics – With this update you will be able to receive device, carrier and firmware metrics for Windows Phone applications.
- Security – As with other platforms, you can now choose to report metrics data over a secure connection (HTTPS).
- Languages – View a breakdown of the preferred language of your users for help in planning localization. Read more about Flurry’s Language Metrics.
We’re constantly updating our mobile platforms and will continue to iterate on our SDK offering for Windows Phone. If there are features you’d like to see for any of our platforms, just let us know.
Thanks,
Anthony Watkins
Posted by Colin Morris on Mon, Aug 22, 2011 @ 11:41 AM
We recently released two updated software development kits—our iOS 3.0 SDK and Android 2.2 SDK. These new SDKs have both improvements and new functionality that we hope you’ll take advantage of.
iOS
First, the Flurry iOS 3.0.0 SDK introduces a new modularized library structure, which separates Analytics API functionality and AppCircle API functionality into two libraries: FlurryAnalytics and FlurryAppCircle. You will continue to have all the same functions and features as the previous versions of our SDK, however, there are some key advantages with the new modularized library structure:
1. Reduced overhead of application size and memory footprint with independence to linking Advertisement libraries as desired
2. The FlurryAnalytics library has a new API method to optionally set session reporting requests to HTTPS. This optional encryption will deliver traffic more securely.
Android
The Android 2.2 SDK release also provides and an option for HTTPS data submission. We also addressed several key of the performance issues.
We hope you find these SDKs more efficient and easy to use.
Posted by Sean Byrnes on Fri, Jan 28, 2011 @ 01:22 PM
We've just released a new feature under the Audience tab in the analytics for your iOS applications called Language Metrics. This new view shows you a breakdown of the preferred language of your users.
New Language Metrics View
These new metrics can be invaluable in planning your internationalization strategy. Translating your application into other languages (internationalization) can be an expensive undertaking so prioritizing the most popular languages is important. Language Metrics provide you a simple way to identify the most popular languages and regions so you can make sure to translate into those languages first.
Where does the data come from? Smartphones allow users to specify their preferred language (also known as their locale) when they set up their device and applications that support internationalization can use it to customize their interface for these users. For example, an application that supports internationalization might appear in English to a user in the United States but in French to a user in France. Even if your application doesn't support the preferred language of the user this preference information is still provided by the phone and collected by the Flurry SDK.
To browse your Language Metrics simply select one of your iOS applications and navigate to the Audience tab and click on Language. You will see a summary view of the top languages preferred by your users, with the option to view popularity by a number of metrics (New Users, Sessions, Active Users, etc.). You can also drill down into a language to view the most popular countries for that language which can be helpful since many languages have regional dialects.
We are working to add this same feature to other platforms in the near future.
Posted by Sean Byrnes on Thu, Jan 06, 2011 @ 07:00 PM
We are constantly innovating here at Flurry - working to bring you the best, most powerful and easiest to use products.
One of our best sources of new ideas is the constant stream of suggestions and ideas from developers like you. So, to ring in the new year, we're launching a brand new layout for the Flurry website based on some of the most common requests. All the same great data you've come to rely on is still there, but now it's easier to find.
The following are descriptions of the key changes to help you get the most out of them.
Better Data Visualization
You've probably already noticed that the website now takes up the entire width of your browser. This gives you more room to examine your data and gives us more room to add new visualizations in the future.
New full-width website layout
There's not much else to say, other than keep your eyes out for new features to take up all the new space in the near future.
Easily find what you need
No matter how well we design the website, there will always be times when you are looking for something that you can't find. For those times we've added a search box in the upper right corner of the screen. Just type in what you are looking for, hit Enter and you'll see all matching results grouped by type (Application, Event, etc.).
Search Box (found in the upper right)
On the Search Results page you can filter by what you're looking for using the menu on the left.
Search Results Page
You'll also notice a link to the Flurry Wiki for more information and documentation which will automatically take you into the Wiki Search system.
Simplified Navigation
The scope of Flurry Analytics has expanded over the past year to go beyond single applications and provide you with insights on how your entire portfolio is performing. To make it easier to find information about either your Company's portfolio or an individual Application we've changed the tabs at the top to Company and Application.
New Tab Navigation
The Company tab includes all of the analytics and information about your entire company's portfolio, including Platform, Category and Device summaries and the Conversion tools. The Applications tab contains the analytics for individual applications. You'll notice that both views include simplified displays of the summary data but the same drill down interface you're already using.
The Home and AppCircle tabs remain unchanged.
One App, One Place
Previously, depending on what you needed to do with your applications you might have needed to go to two or three different sections of the website. Now, all the information and configuration for an application is contained in one place. Just go to the Applications tab and select the application you want. You'll notice that you're taken to the same Analytics view you are used to, with a new menu option "Manage".
Manage Application Menu
This new option collects all of the pages that used to be scattered across the website for managing this application. The options allow you to:
App Info: Change the name of the application, category or any other information that describes this application.
Versions: View all of the versions of this application currently being tracked.
Events: View all of the events tracked in this application, add descriptions and delete any unneeded events.
Permissions: Track who has access to this application and make any necessary changes.
Advanced: Perform advanced operations such as Deleting this application. Only Administrators can perform Advanced operations.
All of these changes are designed to make the Flurry service easier for you to use. If you can think of anything else that we can do to improve the service or have new features you'd like to see fill all the new space, just let us know by clicking on Help.
Posted by Sean Byrnes on Wed, Oct 06, 2010 @ 12:13 PM
We spend a lot of time here at Flurry ensuring that the metrics we provide to you are as useful and meaninful as possible.
Since the Flurry Analytics service launched, we've offered a number of metrics around Session Length (the length of time a user uses the application) and one of them was Average Session Length. Viewing the Average Session Length over time can give you a good sense as to whether users are spending more or less time in the application as you add new features or make other changes. For all of Flurry Analytics we define the Average to be the arithmetic mean.
Unfortunately, we surveyed the distribution of Session Lengths and it turns out that for the vast majority of applications it is not a normal distribution. In statistics, a normal distribution is the typical bell-shaped distribution you expect to measure with a mean and a standard deviation. Distributions that are not normal don't necessarily follow this bell-shaped curve and hence the mean and standard deviation are not as meaningful. In fact, the mean will often be much larger than what you would otherwise consider a typical measurement.
To remedy this we removed the Average Session Length and replaced it with the Median Session Length. The Median Session Length is a session length value where half of the sessions were longer and half were shorter. The median is a much more flexible statistic and can more clearly represent the typical value of a non-normal distribution. You'll also notice that in most cases the Median Session Length is substantially lower than the Average Session Length.
We will continue to survey all of the analytics we offer for cases where we can improve and simplify. In the meantime if you have any questions on these or other metrics please let us know.
Posted by Peter Farago on Tue, Jun 15, 2010 @ 05:15 AM
Dear Developers,
As promised, Flurry is making available a modified version of its SDK based on its interpretation of the updatd iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (PLA). This version of the Flurry SDK is compatible with XCode 3.2.3 and designed for OS 4.0 (iOS) applications.
In this version of the Flurry SDK, we modified which data is collected. This updated SDK version does not collect the following device data: device name, operating system version and firmware version. Because Apple allows the collection of UDID for the purpose of advertising, we continue to collect this data as the Flurry SDK includes AppCircle, Flurry's mobile advertising solution.
Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback about the SDK at support@flurry.com. As always, we welcome your input.
You can download this latest Flurry SDK here.
Thanks,
Peter FaragoVP MarketingFlurry
Posted by Peter Farago on Thu, Jun 10, 2010 @ 06:25 PM
Dear Developers,
As you may know, Apple released the gold master of its iPhone 4.0 SDK earlier this week as well as an updated, revised version of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (PLA). In the PLA, specific changes to section 3.3.9 were made, including the removal of definitions around data (i.e., user data and device data). We are seeking clarification from Apple.
Independent of forthcoming Apple feedback, we have concluded that certain modifications to the Flurry SDK are necessary. Our plan is to release a modified version of the Flurry SDK early next week, which will incorporate our interpretation of the new language.
We appreciate your patience in this process.
Sincerely,
Peter Farago
VP Marketing
Flurry
Posted by Peter Farago on Thu, Jun 03, 2010 @ 06:11 PM
Many of you have asked about your ability to use Flurry Analytics for iPhone OS 4.0 apps, due in part to language in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (PLA), as well as more recent comments made by Steve Jobs at D8 regarding Flurry.
Rest assured, Flurry is taking all possible steps to ensure its analytics service will be in compliance with the iPhone OS 4.0 PLA, due to take effect later this Summer. For any application you are building and shipping before OS 4.0 (aka 3.1.3 and 3.2), it continues to be "business as usual." As soon as the iPhone 4.0 SDK comes out of beta, Flurry will release its updated, compliant analytics SDK.
At present, the new Flurry Analytics SDK is targeted to be available in early-to-mid July, and we will provide as much notice as possible before releasing it.
Most importantly, Flurry continues its commitment to helping developers build better applications. That has always been, and continues to be our main goal. In addition to supporting developers, we take seriously the responsibility of protecting consumer privacy and working well with platform providers such as Apple and Google.
Specifically regarding Apple, we read the transcript of comments made at D8. Well before the D8 conference, we were already focused on the issues raised, and had been proactively taking steps to address them in coordination with some of our key customers, the total of which now exceeds 30,000. We have also been in communication with Apple.
1. On the issue of consumer privacy, Flurry has always felt as strongly about this topic as Apple does. For several months, even prior to Apple releasing its PLA for OS 4.0, Flurry had been proactively developing an initiative, along with its largest customers, that leads the mobile industry in protecting consumer privacy. We announced our Privacy First Initiative a few weeks ago. If you would like to learn more, you can read the announcement and FAQs here:
Privacy Initiative Announcement:
http://www.flurry.com/about-us/press/Flurry_PrivacyFirstInitiative_051310.pdf
Privacy Initiative FAQs:
http://www.flurry.com/about-us/press/Flurry_PFI_FAQ_051310.pdf
2. On the issue of device data, as stated above, we are updating our analytics service to comply with the iPhone 4.0 PLA. For example, our new Analytics SDK, releasing later this summer, will not collect device data. All in all, we believe the changes required by Apple to be in compliance should have little impact on the usefulness we provide to developers about how to improve their applications, and how to continue to increase consumer satisfaction.
Finally, regarding sharing some specific aggregated usage statistics, to which Apple made specific reference at D8, we will comply with their wishes. Our goal continues to be to add value to the developer ecosystem and be a strong partner to platform providers. That allows us to be the best possible partner to developers like you, who are our customers and main concern.
Sincerely,
Peter FaragoVP MarketingFlurry
Posted by Peter Farago on Wed, Apr 14, 2010 @ 10:27 AM
Dear developer,
As you may be aware, Apple included new language in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that it made available along with the OS 4.0 SDK beta last Thursday, April 8.
Part of section 3.3.9 states:
"Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple's prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited."
We believe that this affects our services as well as most if not all ad network services.
Flurry has contacted Apple and is seeking clarification on the language. Our goal is to move forward in a way that continues to provide valuable insight to developers about how to build better apps, while complying with the new Agreement. We believe this is possible, and in a way that still serves your needs for real-time information.
More than anything, we want you to be aware that we are focused on this issue and looking to resolve it as soon as possible, which could include issuing an updated SDK. We understand that not having accurate information can be unsettling. In the meantime, the application submission process appears to be unchanged at Apple, and we are closely monitoring the situation.
We will continue to keep you abreast of any developments.
Thanks,
The Flurry Team