ReadWriteWeb

The first interactions a user has with an app will determine its overall success ands longevity. If a user likes an app, its long-term potential greatly increases. If not, well, it is destined to the black hole of app oblivion.

That is why the ability to track the first few sessions a user has with an app in real-time is critical. Mobile marketing and analytics startup Apsalar is releasing an update to its platform called Daily Cohorts that allows publishers to track app analytics in real-time the day it is published. Developers can then make determinations on how best to market and monetize the app while it is still fresh in the users' mind.

App developers are looking for ways to gain users and keep them in the fold through actionable data. There are a variety of ways to do this and several startups have popped up in the last couple of years to focus on particular elements of analytics, advertising, marketing and engagement layers. At this point most of these startups are focusing only on one or two of these problems.

Analytics and engagement startup Apsalar wants to change that. The company has been working all summer on products for analyzing data, engaging users across app platforms, optimizing the time spent in apps and helping developers monetize their users. It is a holistic approach that none of the other competitors have fully grasped yet.

If you are a mobile developer, the findings of a report from framework provider Appcelerator and research firm IDC are fascinating. The Kindle Fire is, well, on fire. So, apparently, is the Barnes & Noble Nook Android tablet. Nokia and Microsoft are making headway with Windows Phone, BlackBerry continues its free fall and HTML5 has superseded everything but iOS and Android in developer interest.

Freemium is becoming the standard mobile business model and with that developers are looking for tools to scale, create loyalty and enhance engagement to increase monetization. You can access the full report here. Check out our commentary and analysis below. Developers: what are your priorities and monetization strategies?

Running a site doesn't only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it's going to be a success.

Increasing user participation on your site is achievable if you aim for the old adage KISS, or keep it simple, stupid. Beyond that, there are a few things you can do to get more people to interact with your site. Here are seven tips to set you on that path.

Earlier in the week, we profiled Concept Feedback, a community that helps site designers and developers get quick constructive criticism on their various projects, and in the article we stressed the importance for young companies to collect and analyze user feedback. Another part of this type of site analysis is tracking bugs, and TechStars graduate SnapABug provides an innovative way to do this via live instant message sessions. Early next week, however, SnapABug will take this feature one step further by adding a pro-active chat feature which will allow companies to both help wayward visitors and capitalize on possible sales opportunities.

While few of us are bold enough to lay claim to Nostradamus-like powers of prophecy, it's still interesting to read industry predictions. ReadWriteWeb recently released a list of tech predictions for 2010 and as of a yesterday, Senior VP Steve Rubel and the folks at Edelman PR agency uploaded their predictions entitled Digital Visions: 10 Ideas for the New Decade.

PostRank just launched a new analytics tool that promises to give publishers a better way to track the social engagement around their content across the web. To do so, PostRank Analytics, which costs $9 per month after a free 30-day trial, combines engagement metrics its already collects from social networks with traditional analytics data from Google Analytics. Given that the majority of engagement around a blog post now happens off-site and within an hour after a post goes up, PostRank's ability to give users a real-time view of how a story is being shared on multiple social networks can be quite useful.