Add categorizations for apps

[ghost]

Granted, we are going to eventually have users choosing and installing apps themselves from our app store. However, right now apps are basically contextless. With just a few more than we already have, the user would be left to an annoying hunting game to try and figure out what each app does. This is not something that I believe helps discoverability in any way.

I recommend that we do at minimum what is laid out in "A", to give some context to the apps. The second options is possibly preferable before we have our app store, but probably gets thrown out after the fact.

[mackuba]

+1. What other categories can we think of? I think we should try to come up with as many as we'll potentially need before people start adding such field to app manifests...

I would add "Charities". Other things that wouldn't fit into the existing ones: Coinality, Coinmap, Proof of existence.

[ghost]

Agreed about Charities, but should we just copy Apple's list or maybe whittle it down?

[mackuba]

No, not really... I had the same idea but most of them are completely irrelevant here (Books, Education, Lifestyle, Social Networking...).

[mackuba]

Ping @weilu - what do you think?

[weilu]

Here's google app store's category list:

We can probably borrow: Fun, Shopping, Social & Communication

Don't we already have a charity tag in manifest.json?

Would it be too much to have app developers provide free text categories associated with their app in manifest.json? e.g. ["exchange"], ["game", "gambling"]
I guess I'm leaning towards keywords/tags rather than categories. In app store, users will be able to see tags on every app and clicking on a tag filters apps with the selected tag. Grouping installed apps wouldn't be easy but would it be enough to just do what iOS first did: allow users to rearrange the apps?

[mackuba]

Even if we add a way to arrange apps manually, 99% of users won't use it, it's not an iPhone that you carry around all day with 100 of apps. I guess the idea is mostly to just give people some rough idea of what they're looking at before they get familiar with the apps.

As for tags vs. categories - I'd prefer categories, I think tags would only work with a large number of apps... At this point if we allowed developers to specify whatever tags they wanted, there would be a pretty small chance that any tags would repeat at all :)

[weilu]

Makes sense. Categories work for me.

There's no way we can stop developers from putting their own categories though. Maybe for the unrecognized category, we can chuck them under "Uncategorized" or "Others". Toolbelt can provide the full category list on init and prompt developer to set a category if not found on package and release

[ghost]

I recommend that approach, "Uncategorized"

[mackuba]

So we have:

• Exchanges
• Shopping
• Fun or Games (I guess Fun is better since it's more general...)
• Charities (I'd still include it as a category, the charity field is just a way to opt-out of the fees we might introduce in the future)
• Uncategorized or Other (I think Other sounds more user friendly)

Makes sense? I'd add this as a required category:string field to the manifest.

[weilu]

What about mobile recharge? https://github.com/s-a-y/mobile-recharge.hiveapp Shopping seems like a stretch

[mackuba]

What about mobile recharge?

Hmm, I don't know... Tools, Utilities? Wei's BitcoinAverage could go there too.

Also:

• I'm wondering if Charities isn't too narrow, e.g. "Support Hive" isn't really a charity...
• for gambling apps, Games would probably sound better than Fun
• we could add Wallets - Coinbase it more of a wallet than an exchange

[ghost]

Let's not get too specific. I like "fun" as a category until we have so many things that we should split it. And wallets? Well maybe you're right but that's totally confusing. ("I thought I was using a wallet") :)

[mackuba]

"Web wallets", "Online wallets"...

[weilu]

I'm wondering if Charities isn't too narrow, e.g. "Support Hive" isn't really a charity...

What about "Gifts/donation"? The idea comes from: http://simulacrum.cc/2013/04/15/what-do-people-actually-buy-with-bitcoin/

[mackuba]

Ok, once again:

• Exchanges (Bitstamp, LocalBitcoins, potentially other exchanges too)
• Online wallets (Coinbase, in future Blockchain and other wallets)
• Shopping (Bitcoin Store, BitPremier, Cointagion)
• Fun (Minefield, Patten, SatoshiRat)
• Utilities (Mobile Recharge, BitcoinAverage)
• Donations (Sean's Outpost, Support Hive)
• Other

[mackuba]

Ping - is that last version ok?

[mackuba]

Ping retry

[ghost]

Looks okay to me

[mackuba]

@w-hive should these category sections be used in the App Store, or the installed apps list, or both?

[ghost]

Both

edit: I take that back. Maybe not in the App List after all.

[mackuba]

Updated docs: https://github.com/hivewallet/hive-osx/wiki/How-to-build-a-Hive-app#manifest-file.

Todo:

• @weilu - update app store to show apps in sections
• everyone - update your app manifests (I've updated Coinbase)

(I've used "Wallets" because all the other categories use one word and because it's more generic, but we can display it as "Online wallets" in the UI.)

[mackuba]

Moved to: hivewallet/app-store#30