From the first day AppStretch went live we have been getting your requests to support web apps, and other apps and games that are distributed by other means than one of the app stores. Today I’m happy to announce that you can start collecting feature ideas for your web and other apps, and run crowdfunding campaigns to fund the development of these ideas.

Add your app today. Make sure that your app’s site has relevant contact information (preferably email address). We will use it to verify your ownership of the app. Once that process is complete you’ll be able to start taking your app to the next level with the help of your loyal users.

Additionally, there’s just a little bit more than a week left to verify your app and participate in sweepstakes to win an ultimate developer laptop. So, don’t wait up. Add your app now!

Any ideas on how we can improve AppStretch itself? You can now request AppStretch features on AppStretch. A little meta, I know.

We’ve made it easy to automatically verify your ownership of the app by adding a short string to the description in one of the supported app stores. However, if this was not something you are willing or able to do, you were out of luck.

Not anymore!

Now you can apply your app for manual ownership verification by submitting a request via the same form. Just make sure that the app store listing includes contact your information (email, Twitter, Facebook, or an official website with contact information). We will send instructions to complete verification via one of those channels and you will be one step closer to running your first campaign.

And, by the way, you can still win a MacBook Pro or a Surface Book by verifying your app until the end of June. And there are no more excuses not to. Add your app or game now.

We have just added a bunch of features and improvements to AppStretch. Here are the most notable…

New ways to login

In addition to Facebook, Twitter and a local login, you can now use Google, Microsoft Account and Steam. This should make it easier for your users coming from these platforms to vote on feature requests and campaigns.

Feature request sorting and filtering

The more active and outspoken app’s community gets, the harder it becomes to track all the feature requests. We’ve added a way to sort feature requests either by date or popularity (votes). Additionally you can filter requests by status – by default you will only see feature requests that are open (neither implemented, nor declined). You can always toggle an option to see declined and/or implemented requests.

We have also renamed the “Under review” status, which confused a couple of users and developers, to “Under consideration”. A new “Implementing” request status was added to signal that the feature is in development.

Markdown support for campaign descriptions

Structure and emphasize important information in your crowdfunding campaigns by formatting the description using markdown.

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I hope you like how AppStretch is progressing. More updates are underway. Let us know if there’s something specific you’d like to see in the comments below.

It took a little longer than we initially expected, but app users can pledge their support for feature requests and campaigns for your apps and games with Facebook starting now.

Due to Facebook rules we cannot prefill the text that is shared and it will be up to users to provide the copy, but hopefully it results in even better and authentic recommendations to their Facebook friends. If this proves to be the case, we will consider reworking the Twitter pledges accordingly.

What other social networks do your users frequent? What type of social pledges should we add next? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below or via email.

And don’t forget to verify your app on AppStretch before the end of June to be eligible to win a great prize.

AppStretch was conceived on the idea of helping developers separate signal from noise by asking customers to put their money where their mouth is when requesting new features. That’s why the only way to vote on a feature requests was through pledging support with either money or promotion on social networks. This is what we want to encourage, but in a couple of weeks of real life use it became apparent that there’s one flaw in this model that we can’t ignore.

We have received several emails from developers complaining that users who don’t want to support the ideas in a way we envisioned it, still send them feature request emails instead of backing the request on AppStretch.

That’s why we’ve added an option to express “moral support” without pledging money or tweeting about it:

Note “I just want to express moral support” button at the bottom.

We still want to encourage users to pledge support with something more substantial. That’s why the button is understated compared to other ways of support. But at least you can see a signal from those users using the same system you use for all of your feature requests.

We realize that this addition is based on a number of requests from our developer community and it could be the opposite to what you want for your apps. If this is the case, please, let us know in the comments below or via email at info@appstretch.com and we will evaluate ways to make this optional.

Thank you for using AppStretch!