James O'Claire

Has anyone actually seen vibe coded apps/games get onto the App and Play stores? I've been looking but have struggled to find any.

jamesoclaire.com/2025/11/14/w...

Hi, sorry for a late delay. Did you get your set up

I got this one, it's been fine, I don't have anything to compare it to but I haven't had issues:

www.amazon.com/Swapable-Ext...

AppGoblin just launched a free mobile user aquisition report showing who saw the biggest W/W install growth from ad campaigns in September

appgoblin.info/reports/ad-u...

New research: Most mobile tracker api endpoints are not covered by ad blockers

jamesoclaire.com/2025/09/11/mo

Used AppGoblin mobile ads data to uncover some less well known ad tech top level domains where data is sent. Spoiler, they're all well known companies, but still interesting:

jamesoclaire.com/2025/08/28/u...

Added a rank of the current top app advertisers as seen by AppGoblin as well as a way to browse app ad creatives
appgoblin.info/blog/new-top...

I analyzed the top 4 AI chat apps to see which third party tools they're using.

Takeaways:
More business and monetization tools than I expected. RevenueCat in there on two apps, and most of them had 3 analytics platforms of various kinds.

jamesoclaire.com/2025/05/31/t...

Everyone knows your location, Part 2: try it yourself and share the results Learn how to record and analyse your mobile device traffic, take an app from the list of "shady" apps and share the results.

posted a new article today, continuing my research in location data sharing by mobile apps.
Check the guide, try it yourself and share the results!

timsh.org/everyone-kno...

AppGoblin: Free Mobile App Marketing Tools Free app analytics, keywords, ASO, app SDKs and app-ads.txt data for marketing Android and iOS apps. AppGoblin is an open source project for collecting Google & Apple App Store data and presenting it ...

AppGoblin now has free ASO tools for mobile app marketing with keywords and finding the fastest growing android and ios apps appgoblin.info

How to see the encrypted data android apps send using a man in the middle and an emulator

jamesoclaire.com/2025/04/14/2...

Want to know which apps use which companies to track your data?

jamesoclaire.com/2025/04/04/w...

MW is Short AppLovin (APP US) - Muddy Waters Research Muddy Waters is short APP. Web traffic analysis leads us to estimate that ~52% of APPs e-commerce conversions are retargeting and incrementality is only ~25%-35%.  Code evidences that APP is collectin...

Muddy Waters report that adtech company AppLovin scrapes web cookies seems like a small deal when it collects billions of users data every month via apps.

muddywatersresearch.com/research/202...

What Really Happened With the DDoS Attacks That Took Down X Elon Musk said a “massive cyberattack” disrupted X on Monday and pointed to “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area” as the source of the attack. Security experts say that's not how it works.

Real reporting on the DDOS attack on X. #DarkSrorm was reported by @puckarks.bsky.social early on yet Musk later tried to blame Ukraine.

www.wired.com/story/x-ddos...

Oh, apologies, I'll change that ASAP. I saw you pointed to by cybernews and the posts about DarkStorm and thought this account was representing that

Posting about Musk/Tesla/Russia is immediately flagged on HackerNews. Sometimes stories break through, but it feels like there is either fervent support of Musk there or bot activity.

Example of a blocked post of mine:
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4332...

Mobile apps use 3rd party tools to track what you do. AppsFlyer and Adjust are the two largest ad tracking tools in 2025, but open source options are coming:

jamesoclaire.com/2025/03/11/n...

@aoc.bsky.social Can you please go live on more platforms? I haven't ever really used IG. Maybe go live on YouTube at the same time?

Be careful of growing conspiracy theories.

AppGoblin crossed 30k Android and iOS apps that have been downloaded and analyzed.

Unity at a whopping 87% of games is dominating. Godot, I love you, but I could barely find any games using it.

Check out the rest here:
jamesoclaire.com/2025/02/20/m...

DeepSeek app uses Tencent, Bytedance and ShuMei SDKs to track users from:

jamesoclaire.com/2025/02/02/q...

Looked into open source alternatives to Firebase dynamic Links for deferred deep linking in mobile apps.

Let me know what I missed.

jamesoclaire.com/2024/12/10/o...

@jessicatarlov.bsky.social great clapping back at @profgalloway.bsky.social on Raging Moderates. Standing up for yourself makes your points later stronger. Love the show.

What is the answer to trans women in school sports? Should more schools just have coed teams?

It's pretty incredible that #AppLovin has spiked in value despite having a very similiar size of client base to #UnityAds. AppLovin has long had stronger ties to brands and they've utilized financial advantages as well. They're dominant in non Google/FB #mobileadvertising now

I've been consistently finding that about 20% of the top apps have the mobile #advertising tracking SDKs for AppsFlyer. This turned out to be a lot less than I had expected, though there are a lot of top apps that this makes sense for (Google, FB, Samsung apps etc)

appgoblin.info/companies/ty...

ddxv

I don't remember which forum I see you on usually, maybe LA or just the general Supertalls or Skyscraper pages?

I've used SSC for like 10 years and love it lol.

I'm ddxv on skyscrapercity
www.skyscrapercity.com/members/ddxv...

Talking (Antitrust) Turkey With DCN’s Jason Kint | AdExchanger Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint shares insights from inside the courtroom during closing arguments in US v. Google, ad tech edition.

Listened to #AdExchanger latest podcast about Google's upcoming #antitrust lawsuit and likely breakup of its #ads business.

They mentioned the lack of publisher side adservers and it made me think that someone should work on an #opensource #adserver.. hmm =D

www.adexchanger.com/adexchanger-...

Hm, seems it's just the top 25 for your query unless you have a membership, still thanks for that, interesting resource. Let me know if you ever want to work on something together.

@livinawestlife.bsky.social seen you for years on SkyscraperCity, awesome to find you here. Saw you've been posting lots of charts and stuff, awesome. Just curious about CTBUH, I guess you pay for it? I've always wished there were open source resources like CTBUH.