We received these cryptic press releases from two fairly well-known developers today, and we just thought we’d share them with you — especially since one of them was marked confidential and requested we not reveal anything till Monday; as if! We’re revealing it NOW! (Yes, we’re horribly easy to manipulate).
The first one is from Ryan Holmes, CEO of Twitter specialist HootSuite, and is all about how they’ve said “screw it, we’re going the Angry Birds route”:
Things have been going really well at HootSuite for the last while, but after watching the massive growth of Zynga and the likes, I’ve been thinking a lot about if we are in the right business? Building on top of third party platforms can be challenging, and the team and I want a change. I know that this will come as a surprise, but as of today we’re pivoting business models with the launch of Happy Owls (screenshot and link to private beta below). This game is really addictive and I think we stand a great shot of making an even bigger splash in a really fun market.
As always I appreciate your support, and please keep confidential until our public announcement on Monday.
The second is from the iPhone fitness dudes at Abvio, of Cyclemeter bike GPS app fame. Seems they think there’s a market for some sort of canine fitness app (iPhone dog harness not included. Duh):
We Americans really love our pets! According to some statistics, we’ll spend upwards of $50.84 billion on them in 2011. So it makes perfect sense for the smartphone app developers to participate in this market, which is what Abvio, the developer of Runmeter, Cyclemeter and Walkmeter has done with today’s announcement of Dogmeter. In the efforts to stem pet obesity and help them live longer, they’ve developed Dogmeter, which uses GPS to track your dogs fitness, how far they’ve run, pace and calories burned. You can use Twitter or Facebook to give remote commands to your dog, and, new Text-To-Bark technology commands him in his own language. Commands include ‘Bombs Away”, ‘‘OMG Don’t Eat THAT!” or “Drop That Bird!”
The app is great for any breed, so if you have a Terrier, Bulldog or a Retriever I invite you to try out out Dogmeter and take control of your dog’s fitness.
