My App Got Downloaded in Turkmenistan. Now What?

I didn’t think I’d be writing about Turkmenistan today, but here we are…

I built a dog whistle app. I expected a handful of downloads from fellow Americans with barky dogs and questionable ad tolerance. What I didn’t expect? A download from Turkmenistan. Yes, Turkmenistan. When I saw that in the play console, I didn't even know where Turkmenistan was (geography was never my strong suit... I still have to ask my wife how to get places around here where we've lived since 2008! Then again, I do work from home, so I never go anywhere...). If you want to know, here's a google map link to it. It's near all the other "stan" countries: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, if that helps you out. I wonder how many men are named "Stan" over there. Anyway, here's proof of the Turkmenistan download from the Play Console:

And, yes, Georgia is both a state in the US and a country in Eastern Europe or Western Asia (maybe Middle East? Possibly even Middle Earth?). And, yes, there's an install of my app there, too.

Anyway, there it was, staring back at me: one lonely install from halfway across the world (now it's two, since someone in Georgia downloaded it). My app had officially gone international (and, note: the installed audience is now 33% international traffic!). Forget Silicon Valley — I'm now operating in Ashgabat.

So anyway (why do I keep using that word? I've started two paragraphs in a row with it!), who's my Turkmen user? Let's call him Boris. Boris has a dog — maybe a Central Asian Shepherd, maybe a camel (I don’t judge; do camels hear as well as dogs? This study shows significant adaptation of the camelian ear canal for low frequency sounds... perhaps I should open up the frequency range of "My Dog Whistle" — maybe adding a "Camel Mode" for low frequency tones? . Or better yet, a full‑blown Camel SubWoofer app.!). Boris downloads my app, cranks the frequency dial, and suddenly his neighborhood is quieter. Or stranger. Or both.

It’s wild to think something I cobbled together with AI help and a stubborn streak (and a very grateful shout-out to my closed testing track team who volunteered to install my app on their phones for two weeks in order to facilitate my entry into the public domain of the Google Play Store!) is now running on a phone in Turkmenistan. My two cents of ad revenue suddenly feels like international commerce. I wonder: should I translate the app into Turkmen? Add a "bark translator" mode? Should I launch a "Camel Whisperer" edition, something that Boris could connect his phone to a giant bluetooth subwoofer to silence all the camels in a hundred square mile radius (wait, they probably use the metric system, so a 161 square kilometer radius)? Or maybe just sit back and enjoy the absurdity of being an international app developer, one install at a time.

Note: if you have an Android phone, and haven't installed My Dog Whistle yet, what are you waiting for? It's gone international... jump on the bandwagon (dog sled?) and don't get left behind!

Second note: Gemini tells me that the Turkmenistan install has a good possibility of being a bot, an app that just installed the app, tested it out, and then left, but who knows... I like the idea of Boris using My Dog Whistle to silence his Central Asian Shepherd named Stan when he gets too barky at the passing camels.

Thanks for reading my blog, and Happy Thanksgiving to you all! (Unless you’re Boris in Turkmenistan — in that case, Happy Thursday.)