Adding buzzdoes to my app

I tried adding buzzdoes to my Where is it - Smart Kids Edition today, it was quite easy and straight forward. To be honest, I actually spent more time on fixing the icon then the actual integration work...

First, you create an account and logon to their developer site, then click the "Add new iOS application" icon. You then have to download the SDK, and follow the instruction to setup your app.

The screen below shows the Apps screen, the 3 floating buttons were quite fancy. Please note that this is after I finished adding and configured my app, the "Application Name" will be different at the beginning before you configure it. You have to click on it, do some configuration (shown later) before it reads the settings and correctly shows your application name and icon.

Found 1st problem - not sure if it's because I am using the lowest "free" account, noticed I can't add another/second iOS/Android application after 1st one done? Nothing happened when I tried to click on those 3 icons.

[Update 11/Sep/2012]
The problem mentioned above seems to have been fixed somehow. I found a few problems during testing today (currently waiting for response from buzzdoes) and while doing other tests, found the button works now. As below, I just added another new iOS app, the name is "Test app for iOS", and a new App Key was provided automatically.

The configuration steps are quite straight forward too, just 3 steps as shown below. I got stuck at the first one for a while, as at first I thought it's asking for the "Bundle identifier", it's actually the "App ID" which is a long number. Adding a simple user-friendly help message (or example) would be helpful.

In fact, I didn't do these 3 steps configuration until I got all the code changes done and tested ok. Probably only need to do this if your app already published in the App Store.

For the actual integration part, as I mentioned above, most of time is playing around with the button image. As shown below, they only provide 2 sizes: 40x40 and 80x80, plus a vector file in ".ps" format which my Inkscape couldn't recognise. None of these meets my size (mine for iPhone: 96x96, for iPad 168x168), so have to manually increase the size. Plus, to create the effect of "been clicked", Cocos2D allows 2 images - normal and clicked for each button, so I have to add a semi-transparent, semi-cricle shape image on top to make it look consistent to existing ones.

The coding part is easy, just add the files and following the instruction. Except the provided info is for pure Cocoa code, as in Cocos2D the start up function is different (in applicationDidFinishLaunching of AppDelegate). But shouldn't be too difficult for you to work that out. And I am just replacing the email button, so there's not too much code change required for my app.

The screen below shows the only 4 files you need to add to your project. I created a group/folder to avoid confusion.

You then add 2 lines of code: 1st one to activate it at load time, 2nd one when you need it to popup. As below, when the app starts, it shows this nice looking screen encouraging your users to spread the word and get reward, quite nice!

Screen below shows what it looks like before and after the change on iPhone. Only if they can provide icons with different background colours.

The following from iPad 2, tested when internet connection is not available. A better looking graphic/image popup would be lovely.

This is the screen when it first started, I quite like the design.

As usual, you have to approve the terms of use first as the app will be reading your address book, Facebook contact, import gmail contact, ...etc. Urh... where is the "Yes" button? Should be "Accept"... Sorry, this is quite minor, I am just fussy...

 A few other screens shown below, you can login to either facebook or Gmail from here too and it will import all the contacts, quite cool!

I only tested the Gmail part, after you selected those people you like to spam, sorry I mean "Spread", it will create an email. I then noticed there are 3 recipients even though I only selected 2 contacts. Oh, found the reason why, it added an extra one call "spreads@buzzdoes.com".

As my mail app on iPhone doesn't work (see my other post for details), I tried it on my iPad, received the email and it works quite well.

The overall experience with buzzdoes integration is quite clean and quick, I think you should have a try in your app too!

Now that I got my apps updated, ready for submission to App Store! Let's see if this can double, triple or quad-triple my download rate... fingers crossed...

[Update 10/Sep/2012]
Found another issue, I was testing the display of different languages and noticed the buzzdoes screen didn't pop up at all, strange? Then noticed the following message in the log:

2012-09-10 16:57:41.547 Where is it[746:27007] buzzdoes is blocked for the chosen locale. Locales other than english are not available in the free plan.

So looks like if your app supports multiple languages, you have to either upgrade from the free plan, or disable it if it's not English!

[Update 12/Sep/2012]
Found another slight issue with buzzdoes on iPhone (doesn't happen in iPad), when the buzzdoes screen get triggered, it occupies the whole screen, and it rotates automatically if users rotate/tilt the phone to the side - which is not quite suitable for games mainly in specific mode (mine is Landscape). According to Arther/buzzdoes, you can manually set the orientation as below.

To set manually the orientation please use the following code:

[BuzzDoes BuzzSharedInstance].supportsPortraitOrientation=NO;

The optional properties are:

supportsLandscapeLeftOrientation

supportsLandscapeRightOrientation

supportsPortraitOrientation

supportsPortraitUpsideDownOrientation

Default value is YES.

 

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Any one tried "buzzdoes"?

Thanks to a reader's comment, otherwise I never heard of the name buzzdoes before. Had a quick look at the site and found the concept quite interesting - when users clicked on the icon in your app, it lists out all the contacts and encourage your users to tap on it to recommend your app to friends. Pretty cool!

Wonder if any one tried this and what's the experience like (for integrating to your game/app)?

Actually, one of the main thing that caught my attention was noticing the famous game "Tiny Wing" listed in there. I thought there were some reports (e.g. this one) saying the game has "zero marketing" ??

I did try something similar with Ver 1.02 of my Where is it - smart kids edition by adding an email link to encourage users to send an email containing the link to install the game to friends so they can play together. However the way "buzzdoes"does it is definitely much more advanced and your users get rewards too, which definitely makes it more encouraging.

I am just still a bit unclear about the pricing details, the cheapest one is free with 100 "Successful Recommendation" - still not sure how that works. The help says:

buzzdoes motivates your users to recommend to their friend about your app.
We motivate them by giving them rewards, rewards that make the entire experience of telling a friend more enjoyable.
As a developer you set the reward you wish to give to your users. Your users will get those rewards only if their recommendation leads their friend to download your app. In case a recommendation leads to a download it is called Successful Recommendation.

Probably after you app been successfully recommended for 100 times, you run out of credit and have to upgrade to the next level - still no monthly fee but with $69.95 setup fee and it comes with 300 "Successful Recommendation". Mmm... Wonder what if I used up all my "Successful Recommendation" and didn't upgrade, does it stop my users from recommending my app??

Any way, I am busy working on a small project at the moment (no, not a game, but rather an open source template to share with all developers), will certainly give buzzdoes a try after I finish this project.

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