Ooomf Powers App Distribution Using Twilio SMS

Ooomf Powers App Distribution Using Twilio SMS

Ooomf is a social app discovery platform. They make it easy for app developers to create beautiful, intuitive landing pages to more easily distribute their apps and acquire new users. We managed to catch up with one of the founders, Mikael, to ask him about his plans for Ooomf.

Why did you build ooomf?

The idea for ooomf came from participating in a Montreal Startup Weekend event this year. We saw so many cool mobile apps being built, but after the weekend, many of the projects started to lose momentum and we didn’t hear from them again. This got us thinking that it would be awesome if anyone with an idea for an iPhone app could benefit from having a place where they could build a following without having to dish out tons of cash on marketing.

Right now, it’s a massive challenge for mobile developers to get their app noticed with almost 700,000 apps in the App Store. We want to level the playing field so the best mobile apps and developers are showcased, not just ones that have the biggest budgets.

What have you been focused on following Startup Weekend?

We spent a lot of time working with and seeing great apps that never got any traction. We think this is wrong and our goal is to create an ecosystem that rewards exceptional mobile apps. There’s so many problems with app discovery today and with thousands of new apps being added into the market each week, the task of making sense of it all is only getting more challenging.

We think figuring out app discovery comes down to an improved user experience and surfacing the best of what’s out there. In working with our customers, we know the key will be to help them find quality apps and make it dead simple to get these apps on their devices.

Why did you decide to use Twilio?

One of the biggest pieces of feedback we got from our customers, is that it sucks to find an app on a desktop or laptop computer or hear about it from a friend and then try to transfer it to a mobile device. The current process is not efficient. It typically involves retyping and potentially misspelling the name in iTunes, or having to download it on a computer first instead of directly on the mobile device.

We integrated with Twilio to enhance this flow and provide a text-to-download feature so our customers can simply enter their phone number and they’ll receive a link to download the app directly on their mobile device.

App developers and users love this feature because it just makes it so much easier to download an app directly on a mobile device.

What’s next for ooomf?

We have a lot of users located outside of North America, so it was great news when we heard about Twilio’s global SMS launch. The big vision for ooomf is to be the simplest and most beautiful way to discover and share the best apps in the world.

We’re releasing a public beta version of our product this week, and we’ve got a big vision that we want to achieve in the mobile space. Things are moving really fast, we’re talking with so many great customers, and building like crazy.