How we find the pulse.

What the numbers mean, where they come from, and where their usefulness ends.

Two signals. Two different questions.

App Store charts record a game’s position in Apple’s free-game chart for a particular storefront. They do not measure social conversation, total downloads, or game quality.

Social Pulse compares available samples of recent public game mentions. The current window is the most recent 24 hours; the baseline is the preceding 24 hours. Search queries use the listed game title or a reviewed alias.

A score you can inspect.

For successfully sampled sources, let M be the sum of unique items returned in the current window. Pulse = min(100, round(100 × ln(1 + M) / ln(501))). Growth = (current − previous) / previous × 100, shown only when the previous sample has at least three items.

Bluesky contributes up to 100 recent posts per window. YouTube, when connected, contributes up to 50 recent videos per window. Hacker News contributes up to 100 recent stories and comments per window through its public search index. These are sampled mentions, not population totals. Hacker News is a technology-focused community and may have little coverage of a particular mobile game. Pagination caps, search matching, deleted content, language, platform availability, and source mix affect the result. Scores with different source coverage are not directly comparable.

Missing means missing.

A missing credential, blocked request, failed window, or unavailable service is disclosed. A failed source is excluded from both windows. If every source fails, Pulse is unavailable. A successful search with no mentions can produce a real zero. We never substitute ratings or chart rank for missing social data.

Freshness and scope.

The daily catalog job is scheduled for 04:15 UTC across US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea storefronts. It discovers games from current charts and refreshes up to 300 known games, rotating through the oldest checks as the catalog grows. The social job runs at 06:15 UTC and checks the 24 stalest games per run to bound requests and cost. This is discovery coverage, not a complete enumeration of the App Store. Only scores checked within 48 hours appear in the social ranking.

Upcoming games.

An upcoming game requires a reviewed App Store preorder or official publisher announcement. Dates can change. A date that has not been announced remains TBA; a passed unverified date is flagged for review instead of assumed released.

Human context still matters.

Games can be talked about because they are loved, criticized, newly updated, or briefly controversial. Pulse measures sampled activity rather than sentiment or a recommendation to buy.