Are bulk app generators junking up the App Store again?
Ebook apps are somewhat of an anomaly. Apple must walk a fine line here, as most of these apps really are promotional and/or of limited use. Why not just publish via iBooks, for example, if your ebook contains no more than text and images? One answer is backwards compatibility, yes. Another is money -- the App Store is more of a shopping haven than iBooks. Money seems to be the motivation in this "app farm" mentality, as developers can churn out dozens of titles in a day and game the system for exposure. Alex discovered AppStudio2010 has stocked the store full of ebook apps. In fact, "on November 30, 2010 alone, AppStudio2010 got 28 apps approved." Alex goes on to claim that AppStudio2010 already has over 200 "apps" on the store! More curious is their title "Chronicles of Narnia," with a description matching that of the Amazon boxed set for the C.S. Lewis series. There are others mentioned as well, including an outfit called Libro Movil with over 360 apps, and Mobido LLC with almost 300. Yesterday Alex wrote another post revealing even more of these guys, possibly based in Vietnam and certainly beyond prolific.
The point Alex makes is that submitting that many apps within a small time frame is unlikely to yield quality apps. Also, many of these apps wind up climbing the charts, nudging out higher-quality apps. How? They are being purchased, Alex claims, by the developers -- inflating the numbers in varying degrees. If Apple wants to maintain a curated store of the best quality, he suggests that it constrict the number of apps submitted per day. I think this is a fair compromise. Of course, there are many other issues with the store and developers -- critical updates and patches can go unapproved for days, as the recent store description for Sketch Fighter will show. There's also the issue of buying one's own apps in large numbers to get placement on a top 10 list. I don't see an easy solution there.
For now, it is up to the consumer to wade through what is becoming a wasteland of shoddy ebooks being cranked out from these content factories. Just this past May we wrote about spammers and app clones junking up the store. One has to wonder how the Mac App Store will fare.
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We've long written about the travails of the App Store, specifically about the hardships some developers have endured (particularly in the...
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It's economics. If the app spammers are making money then the Market needs 'rigging' to make such unwanted behaviour unproffitable. However, doing that without also damaging the app dev ecology is more difficult.
And yes, I suspect it also suits Apple to have oodles of apps even if many are trash as it is being seen in the marketing as a discriminator against competitors (Android).
My suggestion would be to look at some form of tiered pricing structure for app approval which is also tied to sales, new app rate, rating and complaints. So, you can submit n apps for free (where n is 1
My suggestion would be to look at some form of tiered pricing structure for app approval which is also tied to sales, new app rate, rating and complaints. So, you can submit n apps for free (where n is 1
December 13 2010 at 9:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAh realised I can't use the less than sign:
It's economics. If the app spammers are making money then the Market needs 'rigging' to make such unwanted behaviour unproffitable. However, doing that without also damaging the app dev ecology is more difficult.
And yes, I suspect it also suits Apple to have oodles of apps even if many are trash as it is being seen in the marketing as a discriminator against competitors (Android).
My suggestion would be to look at some form of tiered pricing structure for app approval which is also tied to sales, new app rate, rating and complaints. So, you can submit n apps for free (where n is between 1 and 10 say), and any updates to those apps are fine too, but then charge $100 x (average number of complaints per app) x (num apps this week) / ((average rating) x (total sales to date of existing apps))
Then tweak that to make it uneconomical to create lots of separate accounts to spam the ratings and submit from different accounts (by checking who the money is being paid too - perhaps insisting on a validated physical location for each dev etc).
Of course, all this adds cost to the process, and the current ecosystem where it is economical to charge only £0.59 for an app might be impacted, which would be a pity.
This had better not happen to the Mac app store. I'm not looking forward to the idea of having the sort of crap iphone users put up with happening on my desktop.
December 09 2010 at 8:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replyas long as apple (and apple-related sites) uses the number of apps as a selling point for their product they will need this kind of junk too. seriously, try removing all the crap apps from the store and count again, i doubt the numbers would be remotely comparable...
M (happy owner of a iphone4)
The issue is likely that they have a whole department reviewing apps so no one is seeing large numbers of apps by the same person/company. so unless they are also padding sales it takes a awhile to notice
and even if you restrict uploads per day they will do it, just slightly slower. or even under several names
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December 08 2010 at 6:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI recently published my first app (http://showingsapp.com) and was dismayed to see not one, but two batched produced apps completely swamping me out of reach in search results for the most likely search term ("movie times").
Rate-limiting is a pretty good idea, but I think it makes sense to also limit the number of apps published by a single developer. One of the companies I'm referring to has over 2,400 apps!
The app store has improved a TON in recent months—hopefully Apple will keep the momentum going and figure out a solution to this.
I rarely buy an app that hasn't been reviewed (often by the awesome TUAW!) or recommended by a friend. Wading through the app store is usually pretty useless these days. Certainly sales number is no indicator of an app's quality.
December 07 2010 at 4:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyArgh. I hate that stuff. Apple really needs to throttle app spammers. Maybe fix it so that if a developer releases more than one app a day, only one appears in any category's "new releases" list. I also don't know why all the Chinese/Japanese books & apps are showing up in the US app store... what percentage of US customers can even read those?
I noticed this 2-3 months after the iPad came out. I was checking regularly for iPad versions of apps I use, and some days it would just be dozens of similar apps by the same devs, and most of them were out-of-copyright books that were free elsewhere. Some are priced at $10 or more, which is ridiculous even if they were well done. I'd give anything not to have to wade through all that crap looking for something. So as I see it, Apple needs to either revise its policy regarding these kinds of apps/developers, or it needs to overhaul the App Store to allow a much better way to browse. Preferably both.
December 07 2010 at 4:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyCan't Apple easily and automatically detect bulk app store spamming like this?
You'd think. I believe the idea of rate-limiting submissions within a 24-hour period would work. Honestly, if you need to submit more than 5 apps a day there's something going on.
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