Will Macy’s Parade App Succeed Where NYC Marathon App Failed?

Adrianne Jeffries — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:39:58 -0400

It's the era of disposable apps! New York-based MyCityWay just announced the release of the first official app for Android and iPhone that will supposedly enhance the experience of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The app is built to track the location of parade participants throughout the event, a feature similar to the core offerings of the New York City marathon app that crashed miserably after its servers were overloaded on the day of the event.

You can probably imagine that apps built to be used once at a specific time during a high-profile event in the city of New York might experience high traffic. Will MyCityWay learn from the mistakes of Map My Run, which created the paid NYC Marathon app that resulted in the company playing customer service defense?

One thing MyCityWay did differently: the parade apps are free, always a strong defense against criticism.

The app also purports to allow users to follow and share messages with Santa, marching bands and cheerleaders in the procession, download the "much-anticipated Line of March" at 9 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, and help users find restrooms, coffee shops, subway stations and weather.

Download the app? Let us know how it works on Turkey Day.

NYC Marathon App Fails to Track Runners, Users Demand Refunds

Adrianne Jeffries — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:40:48 -0400

The Official ING New York City Marathon Mobile Spectator App Presented by Subway was supposed to allow marathon spectators to track up to ten runners in real time and watch a livestream of the races this weekend. Oops. While the $3 app worked fine before marathon day, it seems to have been overloaded during the actual event. Users are demanding refunds and the app's ratings have plummeted in both the Android Market and iPhone App Store. Of the 120 Android reviews viewable on the web, 106 are single star; the current version of the app has a one-star rating in the App Store after 940 reviews.

A sampling:

"Did not work. Drained battery. Crashed phone."

"Bought it to track my wife run nyc marathon and it failed despite constant attempts. Refund is least the developer can do"

"What a rip. Everyone but 1 person I talked to could not get it to work. Ought to be a total refund. Never again."

"Getting past the login was fine for me ... but the runner tracking functionality first was extremely slow, then stopped working entirely on race day! Did the developers do any load testing??? The app also should cache the marathon information instead of reloading it every time - doesn't work when I'm in the subway! The route map also did not display mile markers, which would have been very useful. With some improvements, this could be a decent app, but as is it kinda sucks."

Another wrench in the game: iPhone users were able to download the app for free, but had to download a $3 in-app package in order to get it to work. "Sad! It didn't work for anyone I spoke to," said MessageParty's Amanda Peyton, who thinks she may have been overcharged for the app as well.

We reached out to the app maker, Map My Fitness, which makes other popular, well-rated apps such as Map My Run. We'll update if we hear back.

Betabeat » map my run

Will Macy’s Parade App Succeed Where NYC Marathon App Failed?

NYC Marathon App Fails to Track Runners, Users Demand Refunds