
App store shenanigans - jeffmiller
http://cdixon.org/2011/04/01/app-store-shenanigans/
======
d_r
(Disclaimer: I'm an indie iOS/Android developer, so I may be more biased on
this issue.)

There are a number of apps of this type. "Real FBI GPS Phone Tracker Pro"
(under various names) is another repeat offender. The description goes on to
say that the application uses GPS satellites to pinpoint the location of any
phone number, "It works, guaranteed!" and then as a last sentence mentions
that it's a gimmick. This app repeatedly comes up to top 100 paid under
different names and publishers. As soon as one version disappears, another
comes up with another author and app name, but very similar description.

Example (top 41 right now in the US App Store):
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phone-tracker-spy-pro-
locate/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phone-tracker-spy-pro-
locate/id379314242?mt=8)

What's fascinating is that the reviews (if you browse through them) fall into
two buckets: 5 star reviews proclaiming that it works, and highly negative
reviews. This smells fishy. The 5 star reviews must be fabricated, if I know
any better.

    
    
       ★★★★★ Buy it! 
         
       by loganczyz
       Buy this app!! I would of paid millions for it
    
       ★★★★★ awesome technology 
         
       by Reynagreen
       It should be prohibited .... big brother ..
    
    

Word on the street is that these happen from operations that commandeer
thousands of iTunes accounts to purchase and leave reviews, floating these
apps to the top.

As a developer, I do find it kind of a bummer to spend many hours on my apps
and then see these make it. Of course, I do know I should spend more time
building apps and promoting them through creative means rather than being
angry at the status quo.

However, I don't buy the argument that "people want these kinds of apps". I
see the typical customer as a click-happy teenager who wants it to work, buys
it, sees it doesn't work, and then forgets about the 99 cents wasted. In the
meantime, the scammer gets wealthier.

I suppose this is no different from selling muscle supplements, acai berries,
or get-rich-quick books, but still. Ugh.

~~~
cdixon
I think thee crappy apps are mostly a scam and hurt Apple and all of us devs.
Sure, Flashlight is trivial but at least it works. Night Vision is a true lie
and feels like adware/spyware is invading the IOS world.

~~~
EtienneJohnred
Apple knows about these apps and exploits (and various other exploits), yet
they do little to get rid of them. Apps like these should be prohibited by the
guidelines. Nobody needs hundreds of apps that serve absolutely no purpose at
all besides attempt to scam people out of 99¢.

Apple doesn't do much about them because the issues aren't in the public eye
and from the media's perspective, they're not very newsworthy so I doubt much
will change along these lines. It's not like these are new issues by any
stretch of the imagination.

So yeah, while this does hurt us devs to some extent, it has little negative
effect on Apple, IMO.

~~~
willstraf
> 2.3 Apps that do not perform as advertised by the developer will be rejected

> 2.11 Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected,
> particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and
> Kama Sutra apps.

They ARE prohibited by the guidelines, and I'm surprised they get approved.

------
gyardley
I've worked with a lot of applications that have bought installs, because that
was how my last company, Flurry, made money.

In my experience, an application that buys installs but lacks broad appeal
falls off of the top lists as fast as it bought its way there. If it's up
there long enough for Chris Dixon to notice, it's because there's a
significant number of people who actually want the thing.

Chris's line of criticism both assumes that everyone's like us - they aren't,
and there's a substantial demand for what you and I might consider 'crap'. The
criticism also assumes that without this sort of gaming, the App Store would
somehow be a meritocracy, which is ridiculous. Take away the install-
purchasers, and the overwhelming majority of applications that appear on a
'top' list are there because a) they're already ridiculously well-known
elsewhere, like Facebook, or b) they were previously given exposure on the
front page of the App Store due to an editorial decision by an unknown Apple
employee.

I suspect Apple will close off this particular line of business eventually -
there's got to be a reason why they're tracking just how often and how long we
use our applications, and I suspect it'll be for a usage-based revamping of
the 'top free' and 'top paid' lists. But when that happens, the top lists
still won't be fair, they'll just be a better reflection of Apple's editorial
tastes.

~~~
hboon
Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS
apps?

~~~
rbarooah
Yes. People opt in to anonymous usage tracking when they turn on 'Genius for
Apps'.

~~~
gyardley
Whether you turn on Genius for Apps or not, the usage information's saved in
your mobile backup. Perhaps in that case it's just not getting sent to Apple.

------
credo
_> >But when you look on the desktop web you see the overall ratings are
vastly lower and that they seem to game the system by releasing "new versions"
to reset their ratings and then probably paying people to write positive
reviews_

I've made this point in the past (though not about this app/company or about
payments)

imo Apple made a mistake in resetting app ratings after every new
update/release. Developers who release poor quality 1.0 apps benefit from the
ratings reset and I can see why some people may see this as a benefit.

However, the two problems I see with the resets are

1\. It makes it easier for companies to game the rating system

2\. It is a disincentive for developers (of highly rated apps)to update their
apps. I'm planning on an update for a recent iPad app. However, that update
will reset the 4.5 rating obtained through the 271 ratings received by the 1.0
version of the app in the past five months.

~~~
mozami
Another idea: Since Apple knows exactly how much money I've spent in their
store, that signal can somehow also be weighed in with my reviews.

This means that reviews by people that have spent a fair amount in the app
store would get a better/heavier scores than those that have not yet spent as
much money in the store.

~~~
mryall
This would be susceptible to the same problems as Chris mentions in his post:

> Companies like TapJoy let you pay to get in the Top 25, and then once you
> are there you can get “organic” downloads by being on the toplists.

If they can arrange to actually buy enough copies of an application to get
into the Top 25, reviews posted by those accounts would surely weigh very
highly under your proposed scheme as well.

------
mryall
A more difficult question is how you solve problems in a gigantic marketplace
like the App Store. Better verification of sellers? Verification of review
comments? Limiting cross-linking of apps? Tougher review process by Apple?

All of these would engender more criticism against Apple for policing their
"walled garden" but is there a better way to solve it?

~~~
TillE
I think a simple flagging mechanism ("this is crap, Steve wouldn't want it in
the store, take another look") would suffice. A supposedly curated app store
should be enforcing a certain level of quality.

And if they're not doing it already, only publish reviews from accounts with a
credit card.

~~~
mkjones
Sadly it's pretty easy to get fake or stolen credit card numbers. Even barring
that, it's pretty easy to phish normal users (who all have credit cards on
their accounts, as a sibling post points out) and use them to vote without
their knowledge.

As far as "this is crap, go build something better" - that's tough to say when
developers show high (albeit juked via cross-promotion) download numbers, and
is also difficult for developers to stomach without some kind of objective
measure of what makes for a good app.

------
nikcub
I thought the whole point of having a closed and reviewed platform is that you
keep all this stuff out.

Hard to believe that these apps have been reviewed in anyway - the app store
is starting to look like Facebook a few years ago

The only way to explain it is that Apple don't really care since they take
their cut anyway.

------
rrhoover
Chris calls out Tapjoy as a means to buy your way to the top 25; however,
that's not entirely fair, imo. Increasing App Store ranking is a side effect
of any promotion/advertising service. While the incentivized nature of Tapjoy
brings into question the quality of these acquisitions, it's ultimately a fair
and honest method to promote your app.

On the other hand, services like <http://appmagenta.com> and
<http://gtekna.com> are downright shady. With enough money, you can buy enough
fake downloads to reach the #1 spot in the App Store

------
ynn4k
Everyday Apple approves around 900 NEW iOS and 50 new Mac Apps in the App
Store[1]. In such a huge market, it is quite likely that some would try to
game it.

The human curation approach falls flat on such a scale. Machine learning and
natural language processing can help us in mining the App Store to detect
anomalous behavior and improve the search and discovery of apps.

The statistical models of temporal distributions of ratings and rankings are
still emerging and such hightlighting provide a useful resource to train the
models. So if you see something, say something.

[1] <http://twitter.com/iapps_in>

~~~
bigiain
I wonder if we'll see Google doing a significantly better job in the Android
store?

This is an obvious extension to search engine optimization, and I'll bet the
guys doing well at it are using many similar techniques to website optimizes.

Goggles web spam team can probably give some great advice to the "app spam
team".

~~~
ynn4k
It is indeed an extension of the "Website optimization for the search engine"
or SEO as they call it. To a search engine developer, SEO means to improve the
search engine for better output.

The fight against spam is a constantly evolving one and though some of the
techniques from "web" search engine could be applied to the App store, there
are unique differences between the two - e.g. the rating, download rankings
are not directly analogous to page rank. So Google does seem to have some
advantage, but the App store problem will need a fresh research approach.

------
alok-g
This happen at a much bigger scale really. At Amazon.com too for example. New
software versions, camera models, etc. all get fresh ratings and comments,
even though sometimes people do mention older versions in their comments.

My point is that it's not just the relatively small app developers, even the
big names are playing this game routinely.

I heard in a course on stock investing that mutual fund managers also do this.
If their fund fails in the market, they close it and reappear with a different
name.

Even with this loophole, much thanks to Amazon which created the rating system
benefiting the end users in spite of the damage it at times brings to the
manufacturers. Amazon had to choose between manufacturers good vs. end-users
good when creating this system, and they boldly chose the latter.

------
phil
There's already a refund mechanism; it's just buried, inconvenient, and kinda
hard to figure out.

I bet a lot of the crapps would go away if more users knew they could get a
refund when they got scammed.

~~~
rkudeshi
Where is it located? AFAIK, the only way to get a "refund" is to contact Apple
and claim the app didn't work for technical reasons (didn't install properly,
wouldn't start, etc.).

