Using Twitter to keep an eye on iPhone pirates

[fbradyirl]

I wrote an iPhone application called Jelly SMS a few months back when I was out of work. Sales were good at the start, but pirates soon had their way and cracked my app not long after release. Luckily, I have some crack detection code in there, which disables most of the good functionality and tells the user to please support me, the developer, by buying the legal version, while displaying a button linked to the App Store.

Anyway, long story short, I thought to myself earlier today that I could set up a Twitter account where people could keep an eye (in real time) on who is trying to use a pirated version of my app. I just use PHP to send an update to Twitter each time my pirate log gets updated. The account is @jellysmspirates. Another thing easily done using the Twitter API, and just to freak em out, I am auto-following the pirates if they have a Twitter account (based on the user name supplied to my app).



Here are my thoughts around the whole issue of iPhone piracy.

Anyway I don't take it too seriously and am not loosing any sleep over it Just poking some fun out of the pirates of the jelly!

[Kalimba]

Originally Posted by fbradyirl

...Anyway, long story short, I thought to myself earlier today that I could set up a Twitter account where people could keep an eye (in real time) on who is trying to use a pirated version of my app. I just use PHP to send an update to Twitter each time my pirate log gets updated. The account is @jellysmspirates. Another thing easily done using the Twitter API, and just to freak em out, I am auto-following the pirates if they have a Twitter account (based on the user name supplied to my app).


Here are my thoughts around the whole issue of iPhone piracy.

Anyway I don't take it too seriously and am not loosing any sleep over it Just poking some fun out of the pirates of the jelly!

Pretty clever. I like the proactive approach you've taken against the pirates. Hope you're seeing better sales figures since adding the piracy protection.

[fbradyirl]

Originally Posted by Kalimba

Pretty clever. I like the proactive approach you've taken against the pirates. Hope you're seeing better sales figures since adding the piracy protection.

Yes actually sales seem to be up on the days that most people are running the pirated version. For me, piracy seems to be a good thing!