Frequently Asked Questions

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AGE Production Information
Compatibility
Message Service
Privacy
Technical

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AGE PRODUCT INFORMATION

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The App Growth Engine (AGE) by Hook Mobile is an invitation engine that enables game developers to analyze, target and convert new users by allowing current users to invite friends from their mobile contact lists to join within your game.

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The explosion of mobile apps and emergence of cloud computing offer limitless opportunities for developers to monetize their ideas. However, visibility is key to success and promoting apps without the right tools to reach users and their networks is fruitless at best.

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Traditional mobile app games are focused on a single user. Yet recent trends prove consumers are moving towards a social mobile gaming experience. Examples of this convergence can be seen in wildly popular titles such as "Draw Something" and "Words with Friends" on mobile phones. The models for such games are designed to allow users to leverage their social media networks to play within the game.

AGE can serve as another layer to your social game network but its true power enables your users to invite their friends to download and play your game. Social network connections, such as Facebook Connect, filter your gaming experience to users who have the app installed, but only if they have the device, carrier, and operating system that supports your app.

AGE is different because it allows you to search your user's mobile contact list to invite people to download and play your app based on its requirements. In addition, you will be able to map the relationships between the same users across all of your apps.

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A recent article by VentureBeat game reporter Dean Takahashi reports that the cost of new user acquisition was $1.30 in March 2012, up 14 percent from the $1.14 in February. By appreciating the enormous cost associated with app development, overhead, and user acquisition, Hook Mobile's AGE offers a very attractive way for developers to acquire new players at a much lower cost. Sign up today to see your app grow.

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AGE's invitation capabilities can be adapted for non-game apps. It will provide the same service and value if you wish to grow your mobile app user base. Try it today.

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We combine carrier information with our proprietary technology to detect the device type and OS version that is associated with a phone number.

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First, AGE applies a filter to identify contacts to be excluded from the invitation leads. The filtration criteria include but are not limited to: device and OS compatibility for the app, carrier network, invitation history, etc.

AGE eliminates these contacts from the list to create a smaller but more valuable subset of qualified leads.

For someone with a sizeable address book, this list of qualified leads can still be long. AGE arranges the list by relationship as derived from address book association, among other factors. The outcome is a sorted, qualified list of leads ready to be presented to your user.

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To reduce spam and keep the initiation experience focused on the best users, AGE will display an invitation list of up to 20 contacts at a time. When the user has finished inviting 20 friends, he or she will receive the next round of 20 people to invite to download and play.

COMPATIBILITY

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Our current phone verification works best with users in the United States. As we scale up and expand, we will be increasing our support with international carriers and users.

Our immediate roadmap includes Canada and Mexico for the third quarter of 2012. Ultimately, we plan to support Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world.

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A mobile user is closely tied to his or her phone number and rarely changes phone numbers when getting a new phone. Therefore, Hook Mobile designed AGE to work best with smart phones that have a phone number and address book, i.e. iPhone. Given that iPads, iPods, and other tablets do not have the same phone number association, the AGE experience will work only partially for iPad, and iPod Touch due to their inability to send external SMS notifications. However, most iPads and other tablets still have address book information, which can be utilized to present the user with an optimal list of friends to invite and play.

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We currently can verify about 70% of all devices and 100% of all carriers in the United States. Our constraints are due to several obvious factors: carrier limitations, user's have a blocked data or text message plan, certain prepaid cell phones, non-app supported phones, jail broken phones, and international SIM cards. However, as more users and carriers opt-in, we will increase the scope of our verification.

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AGE is designed to be fast and reliable for the user experience. Although it can take some users a few seconds to a few minutes to have all their devices detected, AGE should provide a list of "qualified" devices within 1-2 seconds.

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To help us serve you better, please post all your questions to the developer support forum or support email contact.

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Slot Play is a Vegas video slots game on Google Play which leverages AGE. We expect to have more apps go live in the near future.

MESSAGE SERVICE

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It stands for Short Message Service and is a text message service. It is the most widely used data application in the world.

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You will be able to write different custom invitation messages to try out which message is more effective getting user click-throughs.

PRIVACY

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We collect e-mail addresses from people who communicate with us via e-mail, aggregate information on pages consumers' access or visit, and information volunteered by the consumer (such as survey information and/or site registrations). We use information solely to improve the content of our Web pages and the quality of our service, and do not share with or sell it to other organizations for commercial purposes. For more information, please refer to Hook Mobile's Privacy Policy on the website.

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Our platform does not access, interfere, or collect the app user's UDID.

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Yes, we believe that it is best practice to follow your app store's data and privacy agreement guidelines. Apple requires you explicitly notify users for authorization. See our AGE Terms and Conditions for further information.

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We do not store personally identifiable data in our database. AGE can hash and encrypt the users' contact lists information. Apple requires the app developer to ask for the user's explicit consent, and Hook Mobile requires and expects apps that use the AGE service to comply. Please see our Terms and Conditions for further information.

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The AGE service will detect and store device and network information. They include: carrier network, device information, OS type, OS version, and users' phone number and contact list.

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Hook Mobile takes privacy and security seriously. We believe your users' data must be protected at all times. That is why AGE is designed with enhanced security features. All data transmissions are made over 256 Bit SSL encryptions and AGE adds hashing features.

TECHNICAL

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AGE is very easy to integrate. We recommend you to review our technical documentation to get a better estimate of the time you need. In addition, check out the sample Graphic User Interface (GUI), which provides another layer of the invitation experience to consider when implementing AGE in your app. You can customize it anyway you like. Click here to see our quick setup guide for AGE.

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We advise the development community to post requests on our forum under the feature request section. We value customer feedback and will review every post with the utmost consideration. Hook Mobile believes in providing the most reliable and secure technology for our customers.

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AGE can support numerous platforms. Our product support roadmap includes: Unity 3D and PhoneGap. Sign up now to find out when we will roll out your platform.