BAM and Percevia™: Why did we add them?

Recently we added two new in-app features to iBird Pro, Plus, UK and Yard: Birds Around Me (BAM) and Percevia™. Our app iBird Ultimate, which cost $5 more than iBird Pro and $10 more than iBird Plus, comes with these two features built-in. Over the years that iBird Ultimate has been on the market many iBird Pro and Plus customers have complained that they wanted us to provide these features for their apps. They did not want to buy a whole new app just to get these two features, which made total sense.

In May of 2017 we introduced both features as in-app purchases for $3 each and bundled together for $5. We also made the available as a 7 day free trial so you could try them out and decided if they were worth $5 to you. I'm happy to report that the reception has been much better than we expected and customers who have purchased them are pleased. 

Not Paradise for Everyone

Some customers were unhappy we removed the State-Month feature from the search menu. A few even thought we replaced State-Month with BAM as a way to squeeze more money out of our customers. Nothing could be further from reality. There are several positive reasons we replaced State-Month with BAM.

1. The source of data for the State-Month feature was not reliable and had problems with accuracy.
2. The resolution for State-Month was extremely broad which reduced its value for identifying species you are likely to see.
3. Birds Around Me is based on our range maps which include seasonal information and thus allow users to pick a time of the month they are likely to see a particular species.

Percevia™

Percevia is a patented algorithm we developed for making search results more more accurate. It essentially turns you into a birding expert by removing the chances of picking combinations of attributes that would create "no matches found." In other words if they are no hawks that are "red" in body color, Percevia will prevent the color red from being offered as a choice for color. Only colors that hawks are known to have will be presented.

BAM Tutorial

Here is a short slideshow that shows how Birds Around Me works:

Birds Around You Slideshow

Percevia Tutorial

Here is a short slideshow that gives an example of the difference between searching with and without Percevia:

Percevia Slideshow

If you have any questions about BAM or Percevia please don't hesitate to contact us at help.ibird.com.