The long arm of the software developer

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:00:29 +0100

One of the frustrating things about releasing software into the wild is how little information you really have about people using it. I've been quite gratified by the feedback I have had for Diffly for example. Most of it, even the bug reports, have been fairly complementary. But that's a handful of people. Do only a handful use it? I have no idea.

On the one had I have had well over three thousand downloads of the application since it went live (3,389 to be exact). Is that a lot? I guess I didn't think so until someone pointed out that it's a niche within a niche within a niche:

Mac users > Developers > Subversion users

Okay maybe it's quite a lot. But how many people actually use it. According to iUseThis.com Diffly has 24 users, but how much coverage does that site get?

My own stats say that 249 people downloaded the 0.8.3 update. Does that mean 249 people use the app? Probably not. Since I never got around to packaging 0.8.3 everyone who downloads the app today will automatically get updated to 0.8.3 so those 249 could all be running the app for the first time. Does running an app twice count as using it anyway?

There has been some talk of Sparkle2 becoming a kind of centralized app update repository. I wonder if it might allow people to automatically update a site like iUseThis based upon usage.

This wouldn't give away anything personal about the user, it would simply generate aggregate statistics that software authors could use to judge the usefulness of their apps.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on macsb

The long arm of the software developer