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It's probably good to start a discussion on just how far in violation of FB TOS these analytics are (way), whether FB will enforce on a company in which they own stock (Kontagent), or just its competitors, or no one at all.

What are the ToS violations you speak of?

Facebook's investors gave money to Kontagent in the form of a grant, so not sure if that's an issue here.

Passing profile data to third parties is still verboten, as it always was. All ad networks and analytics providers are third parties.

I wouldn't consider Kontagent a rival - we love Albert and the rest of their team!

What's a better way of describing what your company is doing versus his?

Eh, I'm sure there's some overlap -- there always is -- although our products have different price points and we're focused on different features.

But analytics on iPhone isn't anywhere near saturation, and I see guys like Kontagent as just helping to growing the market for all of us. I'm sure I'd feel differently if it was just another Pinch Media clone.

@ Gyardley: I agree with Greg above. We have different models and different approaches to the problem. The market is massive, and still no where close to being a zero sum game.

As Greg remarked, Kontagent is far from being a Pinch Media clone. Pinch has done a lot of fantastic work on collecting and understanding iPhone data, and perhaps in many ways better than its peers in the iPhone analytics space.

Our platform is in a different category than traditional analytics in the iPhone world. We bring to the table tools for of collecting, analyzing social data and optimizing apps and user behaviors ACROSS all of these interconnected social networked platforms (think: social network connected-web apps [fbconnect-web], social networks apps [fb platform] and social network connected mobile apps [fbconnect-iPhone).

No one else does that.

That said, there's a lot of stuff that Pinch, and their "real rivals" from the iPhone/mobile analytics world, that are super solid. Things that we'll unlikely put much effort addressing anytime soon as there is still a lot of green field opportunities for all of us to capitalize on.


We have a lot of respect for the great work that the analytics players have done in the mobile space, and have learned a great deal from them. But we're focused on our own strengths in social and viral analytics, and will be more than happy to work with others to augment our offerings.

@ Scott: What Jeff, my co-founder said said below. =)

@ Kevin: fb, like any other company, does not have infinite time and resources to build everything (i.e. games, user application, social media agency services, etc.) Also, much of what we do also happens "off" their systems (i.e. inside the app's servers) with data that FB does't get -- nor would the have the time to prioritize. I just came back from a customer hackathon, and the biggest complaint we got across all of our users - not surprisingly - was the lack of sufficient tools/analytics from even very largest and most sophisicated 1st party social network platform (facebook) itself .

That's why fbFund was created -- to help them grow the ecosystem and fill in the missing links. They have been super awesome partners to have on side, and likewise so far I think they've also gotten a lot of great value from their investment from us. =)

Not to make this a total love-fest... but its the awesome research and report like this (http://www.slideshare.net/pinchmedia/iphone-app...) from Greg and the Pinch team that is absolutely making a huge difference in growing and supporting the developer community. For those that haven't seen it, its a must see for iPhone developers, and shows how much more there is for the community to grow/learn/collaborate.

Scott's asking the right question ref TOS violation. I like what Albert and the Kontagent team are doing (a lot) but strategically they have their challenges. Why wouldn't fb create their own wrappers and dashboards for developers? That said, the Kontagent team is smart and will find a way to mitigate the risks.

Thanks Eric, Kevin. Scott does bring up some very valid points. We are subject to the same Facebook TOS rules as everyone else is and understand that people may have concerns about this. We've spent a significant amount of time working with the Facebook policy team to make sure we're doing the right things. One thing to keep in mind is that we are very different than an ad network though. We provide developers with insights about their applications but, unlike ad networks, do not use or expose this personal data to anyone but the developer. We feel confident that the concerns with TOS issues will be resolved once we finalize our TOS and data policy with Facebook's approval.