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Developers cheating to get No.1 on AppStore

M

mappyman

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 26, 2008
227
0
UK
Look at the Top paid App right now.

It is "Crazy Disco".

Yesterday it was a free program and now it is $1. Because it was free and downloaded many times, its popularity had been boosted prior to becoming a paid apps. This popularity is carried over to its paid status giving it No.1 position.

Why dont Apple reset the popularity of an App when it switches to become a paid app ?

:apple:
 
Wait until Simplify Media goes paid in a few weeks. Talk about a big jump. They've already had a couple hundred thousand downloads.

I think for some developers, that would be unintentional. For others, I'm sure it's by design.
 
It should be reset - I thought they were going to fix that problem.

On another note, I'm tired of these applications that don't turn off the sound when the silent switch is set. I downloaded Crazy Disco last night for S&G and hit it by accident at work this morning. Nothing like an obnoxious sound in the office at 8 am when you have your phone on silent!!!
 
Very clever. Another one which I'm not sure is fixed or not is people adding spaces before the name so it appears at the top of the list. "Test App" with " Test App" shows at the top of the list. Silly Apple.
 
They need to reset the count

I saw that "Tip" did exactly the same thing. It suddenly appeared in the #2 spot a few days ago after being free for a very long time. It has since fallen to 14 or so.
 
I believe the spaces problem was fixed.

Do you think its really a problem for the numbers not to be reset? After all, they lost money on all those downloads that were free. Do we know for sure they will make it back up with the extra downloads that come with being at the top of the list? I'm not so sure.
 
Greencardman said:
I believe the spaces problem was fixed.

Do you think its really a problem for the numbers not to be reset? After all, they lost money on all those downloads that were free. Do we know for sure they will make it back up with the extra downloads that come with being at the top of the list? I'm not so sure.
Click to expand...

A very interesting point of view. Certainly Simplify Media deserves to move to the top of the paid apps once they make it non-free? They will have lost many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the giveaway. At least the extra exposure at the top of the paid apps may help them gain some paid sales.
 
CommanderData said:
A very interesting point of view. Certainly Simplify Media deserves to move to the top of the paid apps once they make it non-free? They will have lost many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the giveaway. At least the extra exposure at the top of the paid apps may help them gain some paid sales.
Click to expand...

They have lost no dollars. They gave it away for free. They didn't give away money. It didn't cost them money to give it away. Now because the app is "number one" more people will buy it than if they had to compete with all the paid apps from the start. They don't lose money, they gain money.
 
CommanderData said:
A very interesting point of view. Certainly Simplify Media deserves to move to the top of the paid apps once they make it non-free? They will have lost many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the giveaway. At least the extra exposure at the top of the paid apps may help them gain some paid sales.
Click to expand...

There is an element of deceit to it because many apps never announce they are in promotion. They just start free and then switch once they reach so many downloads.

I think it is ok to announce that an app is free for x number of downloads, but acting like an app is going to be free and then switching is deceitful.
 
ballen420 said:
It should be reset - I thought they were going to fix that problem.
Click to expand...

*shrug* Popularity is popularity. This same trick is done all the time with software outside the iPhone, with newspapers and magazines to increase subscription rates, with all kinds of other service sector offerings.

If you want to compete with it, there's nothing stopping you from incentivizing downloads with a loss-leader free downloading campaign, any more than there is anything stopping anyone else.

I find it less duplicitous than, say, this fishy "private / paid beta" program that MacTheRipper is doing....
 
wordmunger said:
They have lost no dollars. They gave it away for free. They didn't give away money. It didn't cost them money to give it away. Now because the app is "number one" more people will buy it than if they had to compete with all the paid apps from the start. They don't lose money, they gain money.
Click to expand...

Actually I believe it has cost Simplify Media money already. Software development costs are the most obvious, and then unexpected server upgrades to handle the strain of 200,000 new users in 30 hours. Not to mention they originally planned to give away only 100,000 copies, but the downloads were so fast and furious there was no way for them to cut off at the limit (they had naively estimated 30 days to reach 100,000 users). With only daily sales figures available right now it was impossible for them to know what was happening until it was too late. That's a minimum of 100,000 lost sales at whatever their final pricetag is. Even if you want to support them and try to buy the app afterwards, Apple remembers you bought it and you just re-download it for free...

I do agree with whosyourtator that any app trying this should make it clear upfront when posted to the app store that it is free for x number of days or downloads, then paid. At least that gets rid of the shady line-jumpers.
 
CommanderData said:
Actually I believe it has cost Simplify Media money already. Software development costs are the most obvious,
Click to expand...

It would have cost them to develop the software whether or not they gave it away. This is irrelevant.

and then unexpected server upgrades to handle the strain of 200,000 new users in 30 hours. Not to mention they originally planned to give away only 100,000 copies, but the downloads were so fast and furious there was no way for them to cut off at the limit (they had naively estimated 30 days to reach 100,000 users).
Click to expand...

Arguably here what cost them money was not giving the software away but poor planning. I haven't been following this case, but I suppose you should include the cost of servers to handle the downloads. A negligible cost, generally.

With only daily sales figures available right now it was impossible for them to know what was happening until it was too late. That's a minimum of 100,000 lost sales at whatever their final pricetag is.
Click to expand...

If their servers were handling the downloads they should have known exactly how many downloads were occurring. If there are too many, just shut off the server.

The number of lost sales, by contrast, is impossible to know. How would we know how many copies would have been sold if it wasn't free? If I give away free beer and 5,000 people show up at my front door, how can I say that 5,000 people (or 1,000, or 100) would have showed up if I had been charging $5 per glass?

Even if you want to support them and try to buy the app afterwards, Apple remembers you bought it and you just re-download it for free...
Click to expand...

Presumably they knew this at the outset. Maybe they could set up a paypal account for donations... or just bask in all the free publicity from being the #1 app.

I do agree with whosyourtator that any app trying this should make it clear upfront when posted to the app store that it is free for x number of days or downloads, then paid. At least that gets rid of the shady line-jumpers
Click to expand...

Agreed -- but more importantly, Apple shouldn't count free copies in its sales stats.
 
wordmunger said:
If their servers were handling the downloads they should have known exactly how many downloads were occurring. If there are too many, just shut off the server.
Click to expand...

You do have some valid points that are not worth arguing about, but I felt the need to correct this section... Their servers don't host the files for downloads. Apps in the store are hosted by Apple only, and they are wrapped in Fairplay DRM which ties them to your iTunes account when you download it.
 
I think the app store listings and rankings need to be divided into three categories -- Free, Paid, and 99 cents!

Personally, I think the 99 cents apps are the most annoying -- while there are a few 99 cents apps that are good, a vast majority make me wince and think "You are charging for *that*?"

When an app is free, it doesn't matter if it's junk, and the ones that are good make you happy that you are getting such good value for free. 99 cents, however...
 
one review for Crazy Disco predicted exactly this scenario...apparently the dev has done it before.
 
So I'm wondering, is there still a complaint here? Who's getting hurt if this continues? After all, some customers are getting an app for free if they get in early. And if all developers did this, then we'd all move to the top of the list, and even more customers would get apps for free. So who's being hurt when a developer has a free trial period?
 
Greencardman said:
So I'm wondering, is there still a complaint here? Who's getting hurt if this continues? After all, some customers are getting an app for free if they get in early. And if all developers did this, then we'd all move to the top of the list, and even more customers would get apps for free. So who's being hurt when a developer has a free trial period?
Click to expand...

Other developers who chose, for whatever reason, to charge for their apps from the beginning, and whose apps get pushed down the ranking list.
 
Night Spring said:
Other developers who chose, for whatever reason, to charge for their apps from the beginning, and whose apps get pushed down the ranking list.
Click to expand...

So make it free for a limited time, and you'll get pushed back up, no? Doing the math, it shouldn't matter if you give it away for free in the beginning or give it away for free in the middle.
 
huh?

mappyman said:
Look at the Top paid App right now.

It is "Crazy Disco".

Yesterday it was a free program and now it is $1. Because it was free and downloaded many times, its popularity had been boosted prior to becoming a paid apps. This popularity is carried over to its paid status giving it No.1 position.

Why dont Apple reset the popularity of an App when it switches to become a paid app ?

:apple:
Click to expand...

That's not cheating, it's a clever way to promote their product. I understand that the download numbers are already off because free apps are downloaded much more freely than paid apps, but I don't have a problem with someone doing this, especially for a buck.

What's the harm?
 
Possible fix for this only allow price changes ever 30 days.. This way you can't play games like this.
 
CommanderData said:
You do have some valid points that are not worth arguing about, but I felt the need to correct this section... Their servers don't host the files for downloads. Apps in the store are hosted by Apple only, and they are wrapped in Fairplay DRM which ties them to your iTunes account when you download it.
Click to expand...

Well, then, the entire original argument falls apart, doesn't it? If Apple is hosting the download service, than how can it cost a company anything to offer a free download? They don't pay for the servers or the bandwidth.
 
wordmunger said:
Well, then, the entire original argument falls apart, doesn't it? If Apple is hosting the download service, than how can it cost a company anything to offer a free download? They don't pay for the servers or the bandwidth.
Click to expand...

No, I think his point was that Simplify shutting off their servers wouldn't stop people downloading, Simplify would have had to change it directly in the App Store, and, for a few reasons I can think of but won't get into, it sounds like Simply wasn't able to keep track close enough to know their app had become wildly popular and went over their pre-set limit for free downloads.
 
wordmunger said:
Well, then, the entire original argument falls apart, doesn't it? If Apple is hosting the download service, than how can it cost a company anything to offer a free download? They don't pay for the servers or the bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I think the server that was being overloaded is the music streaming server that Simplify uses to stream music from user's computers to their iPhones. That is something Simplify has to pay to maintain and upgrade.
 
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