Podcast: Interview With Social-App Discovery App "Chomp" Creators Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards

Chomp is a social app discovery iPhone app. It’s a bit like Yelp for the App Store.

In this interview with its creators Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards we talk about the app, the momentum its building, the recommendation algorithm that makes it tick and how app developers can use it to build buzz for their own apps.

You can listen using the Flash player below, download the MP3, or subscribe to the iPhone Developer Podcast using the instructions at the bottom of this post.

For easy scanning of the interview, here’s what was covered and when:

• 01:00 Chomp: “Social app discovery” or “Yelp for the App Store”
• 03:00 Reviews like a Twitter stream; follow/followed
• 06:00 111,000 reviews in the first seven days
• 08:00 Tens of thousands of users
• 09:00 A more fair view of apps vs. ratings/reviews in the App Store
• 11:45 600 reviews/hour
• 14:00 Recommendations via collaborative filtering (e.g., Amazon or Netflix)
• 17:00 More reviews = more recommendations
• 18:30 Algorithm’s training data mined from the App Store
• 22:00 Revenue from affiliate program
• 24:30 Chomp first app review/recommendation app to be featured by Apple
• 25:45 Building buzz for Chomp
• 28:00 Using Chomp to build buzz for your own apps

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