In just 72 hours (at the time of this writing) the newly released Taylor Swift iPhone App has shot to the top of the charts in Apple’s App Store.  Right now the app sits at position number six, just one slot away from being in the top five iPhone free apps!  There are already over 1,000 total ratings with an average of three-and-a-half stars, with a total of 109 reviews written.  While we’ve had some serious gains in the app store before for Mobile Roadie apps, this one takes the cake, rising to the highest ranking of any of our apps to date.  And this isn’t even counting Swift’s app on the Android platform, which has gone live as well.

Playing around with the app today myself, I have to say that the interactive features are sweet.  Not only can you read Swift’s tweets directly on the app, you can comment and read other’s comments as well. But that’s not the half of it! Let’s say you’re going to the concert in Dallas, Texas, on March 11th … you can connect with other fans going to the concert, post comments and discuss the event and even share photos from the concert, all directly from the app.  There are also 30 tunes you can sample (some are ringtones), share comments with other users about, and decide if you want to purchase them (also directly from the app, of course!).

Of course, congratulations go out to Big Machine Records and Taylor Swift, the real reasons behind the success of this app launch!  Their promotional efforts have paid off, and in a big way.  We’re happy to be the platform for the official Taylor Swift app, and we wish her and Big Machine continued success as she continues to engage her fans through the medium of mobile technology. After all, we told you it’s the wave of the future!

Update:

Well, we knew Taylor’s app was going to be a big hit when we originally wrote this blog post three days after the release. However, just two weeks after the app launched, Taylor Swift’s iPhone and Android apps were downloaded a combined total of over 350,000 times with 10% of all users purchasing music during that time frame as well.  One thing is clear: her fans can’t get enough of her music in-app, as over 7.5 million songs and ringtones have been listened to and almost 650,000 videos have been watched.

It’s hard to fathom all the different applications that an iPhone user has access to these days. Everything from useful time management apps to the senseless Pepsi app that recently got so much media attention (which was also subsequently pulled).  So what would you guess is the highest category of iPhone apps on the market today? Believe it or not, its e-books. Yes, that’s right … e-books are more prolific in the app store than games.  I know it’s hard to believe, but let’s take a look at the numbers and where they are headed.

Games led in the app store supply chain from August 2008 through August 2009, according to a report published by Flurry, an analytics company.  Interestingly enough, however, in September 2009 a new category eclipsed games, fueled in its expansion by rising consumer demand.  The category was e-books.  In fact, Flurry noted that 1% of the U.S. population is already reading an e-book on the iPhone. They go on to predict that just like Nintendo DS sales were impacted by the iPhone, the same impact will be felt by Amazon’s Kindle sales.  Only time will tell if they are right about that.

One thing we can be sure of is that the e-book is here to stay and its making a big impact on the iPhone platform.  With millions of dollars flowing through the Apple app store, authors of any genre and status have a chance to sell their product and get their name out there.  It’s just another example of how technology is literally leveling the playing field and allowing the entry level writer to compete against multi-book authors – in the same marketplace.

So what’s the bottom line? If you are an author, you need to leverage the iPhone popularity and platform to get your book out there in the marketplace.  And MobileRoadie is here to help you do just that.  It doesn’t matter how well known you are or how big your book is, we can help you get it packaged for the app store so you can ride the iPhone e-book wave.  So what are you waiting for?

Since March 2009 we’ve tried to be good partners with Apple, making sure our Apps conformed to their standards, looked great, and added value for the end user and our customers. We also paid attention to blogs like TechCrunch and others that shined the spotlight on specific stories of rejections, and tried to proactively adapt.

Yet, despite our best efforts, in the six months since Mobile Roadie has launched, the toughest part of the business has been explaining to our customers the seemingly inexplicable delays and reasons for rejection. Adding insult to injury, Apple was very slow to respond, or just wouldn’t respond at all, when we tried to right wrongs.

In the last 30 days, however, I’ve noticed a change. I was cautiously optimistic after reading about how Phil Schiller was becoming more active in high profile rejections. Then I got a call from a guy named Neil. Neil explained that he was reviewing one of our Apps, one that happened to have quite a few YouTube videos. He told me that 3 minutes and 42 seconds into the sixth video (which was a cartoon), that there was a scene with nudity. He politely explained that this violates Apple’s TOS and the App couldn’t be approved unless we removed the video. I logged in to the CMS and removed the video in real time, he thanked me, and less than 30 minutes later we got an approval notice.

For Apple, a company of tens of thousands of employees that is reviewing a rumored 2,500 apps a week, to call one customer about that level of detail inside one App is truly amazing.

Even more amazing, Apple has approved nearly all of our v2 upgrades less than two weeks after we began submitting them, including approving 22 Apps in one day last week (a record for us). This is good for our customers and good for Apple to get our upgraded product in the store.

I’m glad Apple is waking up and being more responsive to developers, especially developers like Mobile Roadie that have many Apps in the store. Now, if we could just automate code base upgrades without having to resubmit each App individually…