My app has been featured three times now by Apple (TextPics) www.textpicsapp.com. The first time, in early 2011, it spent around two weeks at around the #3 Top

My app has been featured three times now by Apple (TextPics) www.textpicsapp.com. The first time, in early 2011, it spent around two weeks at around the #3 Top Paid app position, the second time (late 2011) it made it to #8 I believe and the third time it was a lesser feature in a subsection specific to valentines apps but still did top 25. I've spent a LOT of time thinking about how to get featured and how the whole mess works, and as for my experience, my first feature was simply based on being a new idea (TextPics was the first app for ASCII art texting - before I experienced Attack of the Chinese Clones) with excellent growth, lots of updates, and a positive rating. These three points were actually laid out on Apple's developer portal and TextPics satisfied all the points and was lucky enough to be chosen. The second time around I specifically made a move with the aim of getting featured - I made a Christmas edition update. I changed the icon (put a Santa hat on the bunny), the loading screen, and new content was almost exclusively holiday pics. Apple appears to put Christmas features on the main feature page, rather than a sub-page like our Valentines edition. Lucky me, my plan actually worked. And although it did not matter for us from a server standpoint, Apple did actually contact us before the first featuring asking for artwork and assets. I assume we were in line to be one of the few apps featured so prominently in the hero section, but that did not end up happening. Every feature for us started on a Thursday, lasted one week, and then moved to the What Hot section for another week. Between being featured multiple times and being at the top of the app store multiple times I learned a hell of a lot about app store customers, apps store sales dynamics, ratings, and everything else App Store related, though beyond "make a great app and update it often" I can't think of what else can help other apps get featured. I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has, as I know first hand what a mystery the whole process can be. (\(\ TextPics :) ( -.-) o_(")(")