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Your first point is so valid. Having created a webapp for the iPhone myself there really are few places I can go to put my webapp on a stage that anyone cares a

• patio11 17y ago
  Organic SEO. (Lots of work. Requires savvy. Not guaranteed. Stupendous ROI if you do it right.)
  • jimboyoungblood 17y ago
    Example(s)?
    • qeorge 17y ago
      Its hard to give examples of successful SEO, because you don't want extra competition in your niche. As a result, all we (SEOs) can offer for free is general advice on how to do it yourself. That said, I've been wanting to write a free guide to SEO aimed at HN-like companies, because I think its important. However, the response from HackerNews to anything involving SEO is so harsh, I've felt it would be a waste of my time. If that's not the case, please let me know.
    • patio11 17y ago
      I get about 60~70% of my new users from organic SEO. (I have not run that calculation in a while -- it may be higher now. It was certainly a lot higher in October.) Almost every successful startup you've heard of which publishes lots of content has an SEO strategy. Slideshare, Scribd (good golly were they aggressive with it -- good thing they got big before they got smacked), Yelp, etc etc.
      • jimboyoungblood 17y ago
        That applies to standalone websites, not webapps-as-an-appstore-alternative, which is what (I thought) the discussion was about. As a distribution outlet, nothing (yet) can compete with the app store.
• microkid 17y ago
  Why not create an iPhone app, which is simply a WebKit view dedicated to your web app? The client see's it as a "iPhone app" you can host/sell it in the store, but it's really just a web app. (Maybe there's a restriction on this, but I can't see why there would be...)
  • st3fan 17y ago
    Same restrictions apply: the web view has a limited set of functionality and there is no way to communicate between the native cocoa part of the app and the javascript part running in the web view.
    • Ionic_Walrus 17y ago
      simply untrue - its easy to communicate between javascript and native cocoa code. Take a look at the UIWebView and UIWebViewDelegate documentations here - http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIWebView_Class/Reference/Reference.html http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKi... and here http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIWebViewDelegate_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/intf/UIWebViewDelegate http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKi...
  • holdenk 17y ago
    Its my understanding that Apple would like require an "explicit" rating, since you could change your web page to have pictures of an "inappropriate" nature. So this doesn't solve the problem.
• bumblebird 17y ago
  This is the problem though. The app store is like "American Idol". Singers see American Idol etc as a quick route to fame. Then they're "famous" for 30 minutes, then not. It's far better to build up a real sustainable following yourself based on real merits. The app store is full of gimicky one time apps people will use once to show their friends, then never use again :/