Updates to the Application Directory

We've heard many of your ideas on improving the ways we help users find applications that are engaging and useful to them. Some recent changes to the Application Directory are some early steps to incorporate your feedback.

First, we're rating engagement by the number of monthly active users instead of the number of daily active users. As we mentioned when we launched new metrics in June, we've evolved our application statistics to better surface relevant applications to users over time. When Platform first launched, you could see applications ranked by total number of installs. This was helpful to see which applications users had tried, but not necessarily those actually being used. To address this, we moved to ranking by daily active users. This metric emphasizes applications that are used daily over other valuable applications that don't naturally attract users back every day. For example, a movie application might be something users only visit on the weekends. Or a rent splitting application may only be used by roommates once each month.

To help you focus on building longer-term engagement, we're showing you the number of users who visit your application over a longer timeframe than just one day. This is available on your statistics page and via the application.getPublicInfo API call. In the Application Directory, we are also starting to rank by monthly active users and have removed the active users as a percentage of total install user base statistic.

Second, we've been testing an application recommendation algorithm called "Applications You May Like" with a portion of users visiting the Application Directory. The applications presented to users are algorithmically generated based on many factors, including which applications a user's friends use and the applications that have engaged similar users. The suggested applications are not manually selected, and we're continually working to improve our algorithm with other useful signals.

We hope to continue to provide better ways for users to discover your applications, so you can focus on building experiences that users love and come back to as often as they need. We always want to hear from you. You can send us your feedback and ask questions in the Developer Forum.