#itsappening Trusted Testers Program
As promised, the Android app is ready for (limited) beta testing. Here are the parameters -- they are motivated by not interrupting the current mgoblog revenue model (ad supported):
1) Testing is open to whitelist only for a handful of users (10-15). Each app will be signed by email address and cannot be shared with others. You will need to provide you email to get the app.
2) You will need a @gmail or other google account to access the app as it authenticates with the google play store
3) This version of the app will self destruct after the season
4) The intent of trusted testing is to get useful feedback to make a better product. If your idea of feedback is "it suckz", go install the 11Warriors app instead.
If the above doesn't bother you, express interest here: (https://forms.gle/Z6Ne8hp2B14Qbi3u5). Those selected will be given instructions on installation.
Screenshots:
August 18th, 2019 at 12:43 AM ^
So this might be a dumb question that you already answered above and I simply didn't fully understand, but are there ads on the app and you give the revenue to Brian and co., or will it be a paid app and he's getting a chunk of the profit?
If neither, isn't that why the last two got nuked? I'm just a bit confused as to whether this is supported by the actual owners of the site.
August 18th, 2019 at 12:49 AM ^
I haven't discussed it with them. My understanding is that the last 2 got nuked for costing a lot of money to support and not giving any revenue to the site (while making some for the developers). Content owners are completely right to get annoyed when people start leeching off their work product.
Right now, I'm, just trying to figure out if people find it worthwhile. Its makes no sense to discuss the commercial implications if no one wants to use it in the first place. The constraints on testing are in place to make sure that its isn't disruptive
August 18th, 2019 at 7:08 AM ^
August 18th, 2019 at 7:25 AM ^
Not necessarily. If he's not taking any revenue for himself, then he's stealing nothing - merely re-displying content in a different format. This is a particularly effective way to test a product - provide it for free to gauge interest and viability. If the testing is successful (i.e.: people like it, it works, and it doesn't kill the site), I suspect the creator will contact the content provider and offer a service. It's negotiation from there...
It is always possible that Brian will shut it down before any testing can complete. And it's (probably) his right to do so, nor do I think anyone would call him on it. Lots of people will get mad at him (and call him bad names), but nobody will say its outside of his right to do so.
What I don't want to see is Brian's name in the transfer portal because some meanie called him a bad name.
August 18th, 2019 at 7:23 AM ^
You need to stop and discuss this with us asap.
That wasn't the problem. The problem is the apps take an inordinate server load. At high traffic times we could only get 1/3rd of the users in and even normal traffic was slow, and when you're paying for server bandwidth that gets VERY expensive. People liked the apps because they were constantly pinging the server to get updates, but when you have that many phones pinging all the time, what you end up with is a server having to feed thousands upon thousands of people who aren't reading the site, and people who do want to read the site who are in line behind thousands of pings.
With the old app we had an agreement to split revenue from ads, which were crap because they weren't optimized or bid out at all.
August 18th, 2019 at 7:58 AM ^
This seems like a pretty good indication that nobody should agree to test this app or put it anywhere on their phone.
August 18th, 2019 at 9:56 AM ^
August 18th, 2019 at 11:43 AM ^
Thanks for the clarification Seth and my apologies to the team if this approach overstepped. Let's consider this topic closed until this can be discussed offline.
Thanks everyone who signed up for the whitelist; I'll circle back if/when this topic resolves to the mods satisfaction
August 18th, 2019 at 12:22 PM ^
That's a good call man. I hope you guys can work something out because it would be nice to have a good app again.
Keep us updated!
August 18th, 2019 at 4:08 PM ^
The old Android app didn't have push notifications. Was that the problem? It only refreshed when I made it refresh?
Honestly curious.
August 18th, 2019 at 7:40 AM ^
So you’ve designed an app to carry MGoBlog’s content on Android and want people to put in the time testing it, but you haven’t talked to the owner(s) of MGoBlog about doing it, and don’t have any kind of agreement with them to do so?
That’s nuts.
August 18th, 2019 at 7:54 AM ^
Based on Seth's comment it would seem "the owners" are less than enthusiastic about his little self-funded and wholly unapproved project.
August 18th, 2019 at 11:47 AM ^
OP username checks out.
August 18th, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
Why in the world didn't they contact him after the last post?
August 18th, 2019 at 8:19 AM ^
Classic chicken and egg dilemma. I would suggest that you submit it to Brian first instead of to the Board. You might have saved yourself some time and effort to do it behind the scenes instead of in public.
August 18th, 2019 at 8:20 AM ^
Oops! See Seth's post. Nevermind.
August 18th, 2019 at 11:44 AM ^
Apparently he can't because Brian blocked him on Twitter.
August 18th, 2019 at 12:47 AM ^
Hey you fixed the hashtag! Well done ?
August 18th, 2019 at 8:13 AM ^
I would have signed up for the beta but then I would have forfeited the right to complain about everything that went wrong after the finished product is live. I mean, I am a Michigan fan. But then there's that whole site piracy thing this guy has going on....How has this thread not been deleted?
August 18th, 2019 at 8:58 AM ^
More like #itsappening - mgouser sinsoftheschaffer gets sued by MgoBlog...
August 18th, 2019 at 9:24 AM ^
Pirateacy at it's highest level. Don't need this shit.
August 18th, 2019 at 10:35 AM ^
I get that some folks are unhappy about this, but it does speak to the larger issue that an app was promised on the horizon a year ago (8/23/18) and nothing has materialized.
The "mobile-optimized" version of the "new" site is so god-awful that I've stopped even bothering to try to check from my phone altogether.
The technical reasons sited for not having the old apps seem like they could have been solved over the course of the last year...
August 18th, 2019 at 10:42 AM ^
This. The site desperately needs an app. Any way we could crowdfund it? I’d throw in for sure.
August 18th, 2019 at 11:32 AM ^
This site won't even load on my phone. It works on my Kindle, though.
August 18th, 2019 at 1:09 PM ^
Is it because you have a flip phone or a Blackberry?
August 19th, 2019 at 9:20 AM ^
This times a million. I don’t go to a lot of MBs anymore but this site is still by the far the worst, especially on mobile. Still can’t believe they put this out there and thought it would be fine without an app in the first place. Before the “its free brigade” chimes in, how many posts/request saying we would happily pay for an app have their been? I think this guy building his own app without talking to Brian is shitty, but I totally get it at this point. An app or better mobile experience was promised a long time ago.
August 18th, 2019 at 11:31 AM ^
So, I'm obviously on the whitelist, right?
August 18th, 2019 at 4:45 PM ^
This entire exercise sounds vaguely Russian.
November 24th, 2020 at 3:46 PM ^
I like surfing the site via browsers
I see no need for an app actually. It just takes up more space
November 24th, 2020 at 3:55 PM ^
Most of the apps I've known for Android were truly bad. Don't know about this one though, I still didn't install it. If only they would hire professional developers that could do all the hard work. Recently I've had an experience with meteor app development https://keenethics.com/services-web-development-meteor, and I can say that it's totally worth trying. There are thousands of websites that are working on this framework.