AppLoop
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
AppLoop was a two-man startup that built self-service tools for iPhone developers. Its headline product, the Mobile Application Generator launched in October 2008, turned any blog's RSS feed into a native iPhone app in under two minutes with no programming — offering branded color schemes and icons, offline content caching, social sharing, and an end-to-end analytics library. It billed itself as the first iPhone-specific app builder, with Android support planned.
02 / AppLoop FAILURE REASONS
Failure factors supported by the current evidence
TechCrunch reported that AppLoop co-founder Eric Kerr emailed that the company had to shut the service down for a variety of financial and legal reasons.
Co-founder Eric Kerr said the shutdown was for financial reasons (among others).
Kerr also attributed the shutdown to legal-based reasons, without further public detail in the article.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Product or service closed
On 4 Jan 2009 TechCrunch reported, based on an email from co-founder Eric Kerr, that AppLoop had shut the service down and that users had been emailed weeks earlier; TechCrunch treated this as the company’s demise.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On October 20, 2008, AppLoop launches its Mobile Application Generator, converting any RSS feed into a brandable native iPhone app with no code, no downloads and no maintenance.
- 02
Apple then shifts its App Store review policy against 'cookie cutter' apps; reporting in March 2010 notes that AppLoop — the first startup to announce an iPhone-specific app builder — is already gone.