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These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and
by muratsu 1y ago
These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. I’m hoping that some people really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure marketing driven play.
- tekla 1y agoThey provide value in that they lie to you and you feel better about yourself.
- klabb3 1y agoThat’s exactly what I was thinking when I read the article. ”Why are you thinking this is meant to work?”. But of course, normal trusting people will believe it if it’s on the ”trusted app stores”. These apps with graphs are just selling you a sense of control, of compulsive metric driven decision making. Its partly the consumers’ own fault – many people won’t care even if they knew. But it’s also predatory by the companies. It’s consumer tech in a nutshell: put a pretty but shitty app on the App Store, spend 80% on marketing, show ads in the free tier, sell overpriced premium offerings to those who are careless with money, rinse and repeat. I follow some subreddits and groups for ”entrepreneurs” and it’s just like this.
- muratsu 1y agoI don’t mind if the reality of their business is similar to gyms in the sense that they make money off of peoples desires but have low utilization. I used calorie counter apps before and they helped me lose weight (by mostly educating me what to eat/avoid). With these apps, I feel like the core premise - counting calories - isn’t even working and they’re selling people hopes and dreams. That’s danger territory.
- xnx 1y ago> CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr. Source?
- debuggerson 1y agoI happened to scroll through the founder’s interview on YouTube. You may take a look. https://youtu.be/t0U3UREdjmo?si=14oeWqtL9oVszab5 https://youtu.be/t0U3UREdjmo?si=14oeWqtL9oVszab5
- asdev 1y agoI wouldn't trust the revenue numbers, plus the churn is probably insanely high. Flashes in the pan
- wahnfrieden 1y agoThere is good money in the App Store once you crack social marketing. The founder shows several videos of reloading the App Store Connect page showing revenue numbers. It's not unbelievable. (Not to defend the app itself obviously)
- AstroBen 1y agoWhat's going on with the google reviews of that app.. basically all 5 star with one word over and over again - 'good' They're solicited, right?
- m_ke 1y agoI've heard from someone who knows that they're scamming people like crazy. Supposedly they also setup a bunch of LLCs to hire influencers then never paid them.
- thierrydamiba 1y agoI think a claim like that requires proof. You’re accusing them of fraud.
- swiftcoder 1y agoIs fraud not a reasonable assumption, when an app that fundamentally does not do what it claims to, nonetheless has legions of glowing reviews? In the best scenario we are in a TornadoGuard (https://xkcd.com/937/ https://xkcd.com/937/) situation. More likely the developers are paying for reviews
- TuringTourist 1y agoI suspect this might be because diet marketing before AI was one of the most fraught with misinformation subjects you could run across. This is because the "sale" of the idea has an effect on every salesman, so all of the salesmen are trying to sell every thing at once,since that's also selling their thing, and ground truth gets stampeded. Now when you combine diet marketing and AI, you get a multiplier. Both in the sellers and the buyers, since the desire to believe is stacked.
- jimjimjim 1y agoThis makes me sad. Yes a fool and their money are soon parted but this drives user expectations for apps even lower, pushing competent apps out of the market because of the price difference.