Today, I remembered that I had created this blog to rant about my tech adventures. And when I checked, It just so happened that my last update on this blog was posted exactly a year ago. So, what better date to pick up where I had left off.

A quick recap of the last year – I got busy interviewing and changing jobs, which was the reason the blog didn’t get any updates. I started working for mobclix beginning January, and have been learning a lot about the Ad Serving business, and Engineering by “doing” more than “thinking”. So, around August, I finally decided to learn iOS development by just “doing” an app for the iPhone. A friend (who also wanted to learn iOS development) and I picked up really simple concepts to work on. We chose to build a mosaic app. Snap a picture, make a mosaic out of all your other pictures in the library, then share it on facebook. Pretty simple idea, and the mosaic algorithm was already worked out in my mind within 5 minutes. The simple idea then grew into something slightly bigger, and more concrete, and I went a bit beyond the original plan of just learning how to make an app for the iPhone.

Almost exactly 2 months later, I submitted Fotoyaki to the App Store. 99 cents to start with. Daily downloads were about 10/day. Then a week later, Apple decided to feature the app on the App Store (I’m guessing it was because of the cool design), and sales shot up to 360+/day. And after 4 days of being featured, the app was selling around 170/day. I knew my time being featured on the store was very limited. One week to be exact. So, instead of making another 200 bucks in the next 2 days of being featured, and letting the app go back to a meager 10 sales/day, I decided to make it free. Free + Featured = 130K+ downloads in the next 2 days, with the app going all the way up the download ranks to #49 most downloaded app for the day at one point (App was in the top 100 list for 3 days), and the #2 Photo app next to instagram. I wanted it to be free for a week thinking I would be able to get a user base of about 20K with which I can strategize my organic growth strategy. But instead, I had over 200K. As of this writing, I have over 350K installs, and the app is back to being a paid app.

The App is still in it’s early stages, and I’m learning a lot about a lot of things with it. Everything from coding for the iOS platform, to growth & monetization strategies, and surprisingly, a lot about Human Psychology. Expect to see more posts about what I learn with Fotoyaki and the inferences that I make, as they occur to me.

This blog just got interesting! At least, for me to keep posting on it regularly. Go Foto!!!