Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
marco.org
marco.org
The same applies to the iOS App store though. After I owned Angry Birds, why on Earth did I have to look at it as #1 for years? Showing a top 10 with apps you already own filtered out is good for everyone. The top selling apps still show up for new users. After its purchased, it gives other apps a chance to percolate up, which means more sales for everyone, and more 30% cuts for Apple.
EDIT: I'd like to point out that the OP's reference to a purely "editorial" list has the exact same problem. I don't understand why the Apple ecosystem seems hell bent on refusing to take advantage of the digital age. Creating a one-size fits all top 10 list, or editorial list, is a fine strategy for a brick and mortar store where they have to show everyone the same thing at the front of their store. And mind you, this is the absolute easiest online market place feature you can possibly program: don't show me what I already own and thus am literally incapable of repurchasing.
If my girlfriend wants an app that she's heard about, I've got to install it for her. Guess who updates the apps on her phone? :-(
It's gotta be real easy for most people.
I think you're failing to grasp that many normal people don't really want to go that deep with technology. People really do want simple.
More importantly, as a user, I've simply become blind to the top 10 charts on the Mac App Store completely. I have no desire to visually scan for the 2 apps that might be different.
So they should filter the top list like you mention, but show a definitive list online.
He unsuggested it after I walked through the umpteen problems involved in implementing this over hundreds of millions of accounts.
It means it'll take multiple requests to get all the results, sure, but if you weigh the initial request statistically (for the first 10, I think we'll need 12..) and so on, you can avoid even that.
Why bother?
As I said, this wouldn't involve much more in the way of data transfer than the current setup. I assume that 15 apps instead of 10 preloading is the same order of magnitude; the latency is the kicker, not the tiny bandwidth required for metadata and icons.
But even doing this server side isn't that bad, calculating the difference between two sets, the top 100 apps and the apps a user owns, iterating with more if the size of the result is less than 10, is a lot less work on a per-user per-request basis than a lot of sites do to customize their experience.
Of course, Apple most likely doesn't want anyone to know which app is the 11th or something, which means a lot of server side processing to customize the exact list of 10 sent to the client. Sites like Facebook already do this kind of stuff for calculating the timeline for hundreds of millions of accounts.
I appreciate there's a nerdy "IT MUST BE CORRECT" aspect to this but Apple are making billions - why would they bother doing work and creating potential support problems for themselves to gain maybe a fraction of a percent more?
You're welcome to start listing the actual umpteen problems that a billion dollar company would incur rather than just talking out of your ass about "Apple's billions" to a bunch of people, myself included, who have most likely implemented similar personalization systems at countless other sites using a lot less human, financial, and processing capital than Apple has. Apple "wastes" a megabyte for a picture of a wave on their current home page. Any change here is likely to move the needle in a positive direction more than the increased sales from having a massive picture of a wave on their home page.
Say you find the top 500 apps instead and cache that. You still have to iterate over that 200M times, looking up each users list of apps (~50-100 on the average, I have 400+ in my list), intersecting them, making sure there's still a top 10, and caching the results.
Either way, you've done a load of work - that needs development, maintenance, testing - to gain what?
The app store is already making billions for Apple with "flawed" top 10s. You might gain a few 10s of millions by implementing this scheme. What's the point?
to gain what To not annoy users and gain a little bit more of that perfection they are known for. Increase purchases by a few percent. Not striving hard when you are at the top is how you end up in MS, IBM, and every other fallen giant's shoes.
Who's going to steal Apple's #1 app store place if they can't be arsed doing per-user top 10 lists?
Suppose you were at at a new bookstore, and each table of books was in its own little room, each isolated from the next. Once you think you want something, you have to unlock the book's acrylic case to take it out and read the dust jacket.
You wouldn't go browsing in that store the way you would at a Barnes and Noble. If the deals were good enough, you might check out the Bestsellers Room and the "Recommended By Our Staff" Room. You might even stop by the "10 Bestselling Books About Home Improvement" Room, if that's what you're looking for. But there's no way you're going room to room to room to room to room in hopes finding something else.
That's the App Store we have.
It needs to be much faster. It needs to be more engaging. The search needs to be improved. The taxonomy needs a massive overhaul. Users need to be more encouraged to review apps and the review process itself needs to be overhauled. App sellers need to be able to perform legit SEO on their keywords and get insights into where their downloads are coming from. Even buying an app feels sluggish and unresponsive. The recommendation system is crap because they recommend similar apps not complementary apps. The whole thing is just begging to be rebuilt, it's basically the same as when it first launched.
It's a huge optimization problem and it's absolutely embarrassing they are not constantly A/B testing, iterating, and improving the experience. It feels like they have no data science team at all working on this product. The fact that the App Store only changes with iOS updates shows they are approaching this product incorrectly. They should have dozens of experiments running all the time trying to drive up install rates. It's probably the biggest example I can think of where Apple really shows that they are unquestionably not Google.
It's hard to underestimate just how much of a boost Apple will see if they actually build a real, first-class, fast shopping experience into the App Store.
I think you give Google too much credit. The Play store is about as abysmal, sans the OS-tied updates. (Search, lists, SEO, etc. are BAD).
I worked at Etsy for a number of years which has many similar attributes as the App Store, and lots of slow, steady progress was made by running many experiments and aggressively maintaining performance. I'd be licking my chops at the low hanging fruit if I were the one tasked with starting to hill-climb the App Store UX. There are so many things you could try, and with the type of traffic the App Store gets, 1% experiments could almost certainly get you sufficient data to really drive up conversion rates without negatively impacting many users along the way.
Meanwhile, the Play Store search and navigation used to suck, but they've both improved a lot, and they keep the highlighted content fresh and relevant, which surprises me coming from Google (though not having used an iOS device extensively I don't know how often they update their featured content, but from this post it sounds like not often enough). They've fixed most of the stupid issues they had before and I actually like using it now.
All the navigation is counter-intuitive (What do you mean swiping to the left doesn't go back and instead takes me to categories or who knows where? Why doesn't the back button take me back to my search results? etc). The curated front screen rarely seems to have anything new and interesting on it (for apps anyway, I never look at the media part of it), whereas the App Store constantly has new featured apps which are actually good. The first six months I had my Nexus 7 the "here's stuff you might like for your tablet" section didn't change.
I quite like my Nexus 7 and am considering switching to Android for my next phone now that I've found a few apps that I can bear using (and some of them are actually well designed to boot), but apart from automatic updating, the Play Store is not one of the attractions.
The swiping thing was referring to the category pop-out in the main sections (Apps etc) which makes it feel like it should do something else. In retrospect I probably should have waited until I had gotten home and double checked whether what I remembered was correct before commenting. Having a flip through it, the store is less awful than it was last time I paid it any serious attention - having a decent stable of usable apps I haven't had much cause to go looking for new stuff lately.
<terms> site:play.google.com (or, earlier, site:market.android.com)
as opposed to using the store's own search interface. Now I only do that when I'm looking for something the store will filter out (wrong device type, wrong country, etc.). I suspect the web search is still a bit better, but closing to the point where it is usually not worth the hassle is still a big step.
That being said, I'm surprised this has been such an issue, for either store. I'd have thought making sure your search results are better than a blind web search would be a standard thing to look at.
Two anecdotes: I wanted to buy an Iain M. Banks audiobook. I misspelled his name Ian M Banks, zero results. No hint that he exists. I wanted to give my dad A Game of Thrones for father's day, also on audiobook. The other entries in the series were there, but it isn't. Apparently it's not available? Even following the direct link from the author's site to iTunes doesn't work: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/game-thrones-song-ice-... (this may be excusable, if there's some weird negotiation thing going on or something, it was just surprising)
There's a lot that they do right, and I spend a lot of money in the iTunes store, but I never look forward to it because it's so slow and I experience so many errors.
There is some pride in knowing that you are one of the 10 best people in the world at the iPhone version of carcassone but that pride gets to be enjoyed by exactly 10 people. Everyone else gets to see their relatively low scores compared to total strangers.
Over time the app became more popular and and I lost my rank, but it was still cool.
I wish Apple would fix the rampant cheating. While my rank was 81st, it was realistically ~60th because many of the top scores were simply cheaters who scored MAX_INT when that was at least 10,000x higher than the next closest score. That is the thing I find discouraging about looking at the scores, that every game is topped by cheaters.
Apps are complements to the iPhone and iPad. Spolsky has a great post about the competition between complements here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
Basically, the less apps cost, the more iPhones Apple will sell. It makes the entire ecosystem more attractive to consumers because they know there's 100's of thousands of apps they can buy for < $5.
Imagine how much less your mom would want an iPhone if she scrolls through the App Store and finds mostly stuff that's $20 or $30. The platform becomes too expensive for casual users, who are 95%+ of iOS customers.
High quality trolling by claiming Google doesn't care if people hate Android phones, though.
Other than releasing the Android source, Google doesn't really play any part in most Android devices on the market. Further, their store is plagued with malware and shady apps that never get removed. I know because I've reported them and continue to see the same apps by the same developers on the Play Store.
On the manufacturer's side, they rush out devices with subpar hardware (and hardware bugs), build, and software. And getting system updates is a game of prayer.
It's important to remember that for Google, Android is a means to an end: to get people using their services and in turn get eyes on ads and gather demographic info. They aren't selling Nexus devices at cost/a loss for nothing.
But, of course, we are feeding the troll.
Gruber is an Apple fan who is interesting. Arment is never interesting. He is a boring person.
I often read the Reddit Android and Android developer subrredits. Sometimes someone points out some sketchy malware in a post that they reported. Maybe other people report it as well. If the app (and often the developer) are still there two hours later, that's a long time. Usually Google kills it within minutes. Usually these are fake things (say "Call of Duty for Android" by "Acme Inc.") which needs a dozen permissions and are obviously probably BS.
As I said, probably multiple people are flagging the malware which people on Reddit are discussing, so maybe that is why Google responds to them but is not as responsive to your messages.
Editors' picks are always a wild card because you don't know on what basis the picks are happening. But your assertion that they're always about the "connections" you have strikes me as, well, very anecdotal. I have some experience on both the submitting and receiving side of magazines, and generally speaking what gets your story accepted is the quality of your story. People often assume you need "connections" to get into big name markets, but big name markets attract big name authors and that makes the barrier of entry much higher. I have no inside knowledge of Steam, but I suspect that's very likely what goes on there: the more developers want to be on Steam, the harder it will be to be on it.
Of course, Apple already has editors' pick lists which I've heard really do boost app sales significantly; the question is really whether dropping Top 10 lists would flatten the curve further; I suspect the sales would remain vastly overweighted toward the featured apps no matter what, but perhaps if the featured apps were rotated frequently that would help. I rather like one of the other commenters' ideas of keeping the top 10 lists, but just removing apps you've already purchased from them.
The App Store search is pretty bad, as other people have commented. (A lot of people think the changes to the store in iOS 6 made it worse, but it's not like it was good to start with.)
Even an editor ranking is ephemeral. Say you're right and the cream rises to the top--how long would a feature last? A week? Two weeks? Maybe a couple hundred thousand free downloads?
I don't know what the organic/non ratio is at most companies relying on paid installs, but my gut would say it's somewhere on the order of 1:1 or better. If you remove the organic installs, CPIs would essentially double overnight and most of these businesses would no longer be able to sustain themselves.
I'm wondering if the Appstore has gotten large enough that an independent review site/app could make money? And, I mean a honest to goodness review site - not these scammy "pay to play" apps that have been plaguing the app store recently.
Also - if you could just survey a list of 10,000 honest users - that would be pretty good as well.
The sad thing, is some amazing apps on the store (for example, gymbuddy, one of the great weight lifting apps) have languished because only those people who actually use the app seriously would appreciate how much better it is than the competition. I.E. Can you imagine what the WeightLifting App Section in the AppStore would like if you surveyed a 100 lifters who had tried out a dozen or so apps before deciding on the one they like? Likewise for people who make pastries, check the weather, survey tree's, watch the tides, etc, etc...
He seems to suggest the top-lists should be replaced by a list of apps that Apple classifies as "great software". However, Apple already shows a list of featured apps and this list already has a huge impact on app rankings (and IMO Apple will never be able to create a perfect and comprehensive list)
From my experience, I'd say that removing the top-lists will hurt the ecosystem (most users as well as many developers). For example, one of our iPad apps was #1 in the Finance category for six weeks. The media first mentioned this app several days after it became #1. Apple also featured the app a few days after the app became #1 (the app was never priced at the lowest price tiers). The app got initial traction organically and the #1 ranking helped it get even more traction.
It isn't realistic to expect Apple to be able to pick a list of "great apps". Following up on my example, we launched a new version of the iPad app a couple of weeks ago, but Apple isn't featuring it on the "new and noteworthy" list even though the app has hundreds of reviews with 2/3 of them being 5-star reviews and another 1/4 being 4-star reviews
Relying solely on Apple's featured list and on media-connections or advertisements may work for one class of developers, but for many other developers, the (category-specific) top-lists are helpful. I also think that the top-lists are helpful for users. Removing the list isn't going to make it any more easy for users to search through a million apps in the app store.
*Maybe I should say, at least two factors. You can go really deep when constructing rankings.
Google and other advertisers face a similar problem with sorting ads, which suggests some other relevant inputs:
I don't get how or why Apple cares about users using their product more than Google. Because they provide support? Apple support for iTunes is terrible. Try getting a refund for an accidental buy by someone else.
However, we do have a case in point -- Instapaper on Android. I plunked my money when it came about thinking that it was going to be a great experience. A couple minor updates and Marco didn't care less about the pain it was. He played his self fulfilling statement for sure.
These random Google and Android are <insert random expletive> because they don't give a(n) <insert random expletive> statements are unbecoming and disappointing. =(
His previous app kept around 7 - 8 in his category chart and so he definitely benefited from the top charts.
Giving total exposure control to Apple would be an absolute nightmare for most developers that didnt have the exposure Marco does.
There are plenty of good apps, that Apple arent sometimes interested in, that users are, that do well by climbing the charts rather than being picked by some guy in Cupertino.
Marco is completely out of touch.
Can't you fix this by simply excluding installs that happened via the top list from counting towards the top list? If you install it via search or someone's website or even Apple's editorial area, it counts, otherwise, it shouldn't.
Seems like a straightforward way to get rid of the feedback loop.
(everyone should probably do this for top lists, "people who viewed this viewed that" systems and probably even some recommender systems)
However, I've yet to see anybody back up their emotion-driven claims with enough facts and data to actually make a conclusive argument (ie to prove their position).
Over and over and over again these types of posts / articles pop-up, and say things just like this: "It encourages shallow, least-common-denominator apps with rock-bottom prices" --- and proceed to not actually provide any data. A single subjective statement isn't good enough.
My point is, from a subjective / emotional / weak-on-data standpoint I agree. I don't regard that as a valid argument for change however, as this is a big deal for the apps business. Bring the truck-load of data with you next time (and every time you make such arguments) and let's really end the discussion once and for all. I've seen various relevant clips of data floating around, with a narrow focus; I have to believe someone could put together a comprehensive, overwhelming data-based argument if these claims are in fact true.
"Top" lists won't go away until their presence starts hurting Apple.
This is a very misinformed comment. Google doesn't make any money from the initial sale of Android devices, it only makes money if people actually use them, so the opposite is true.
The other nice thing that WP Store has is top-rated apps (or the ability to sort by rating) while this is still subject to some of the "top downloaded" issues it's a step in the right direction.
I don't care if you get rid of top list or not, because not every app can enter top list nor be selected by apple's god hand.
- It would be interesting if the top list gaming mentioned in the article was eliminated by replacing download or install count with something more meaningful like "frequency of app open" or "average time spent in the app per day". These can still be gamed but it's harder than just gaming a metric that relies only on download or install count.
- There should still be some sort of collaborative filtering. I favor improving the top list's ranking algorithm over getting rid of the top list.
- Giving new apps more chance to succeed or exposure could be implemented similar to how HN includes job postings. Namely the listing is put in the top spot of "the list" for a bit and slowly falls down. In the app store the new app should probably fall rapidly unless user-engagement is high. How to measure that? Download count is too easy to game so other metrics would need to be used.
- I think developers should be mindful that they're selling to (in general) everyone and not just other developers. When Marco mentions "high-quality" apps he's speaking from a developer's perspective. And developers often care a lot about details that the general public doesn't notice or doesn't care about if they do notice.
- The app store should be faster. The iTunes load time feels too long these days.
That's why the Web works - search is a solved problem.
Search on app stores is archaic and abysmal -- you'd think Google could solve this kind of problem.
How about spiders for apps. I mean they can look for high page rank sites that links to an app for example. they can then score these based from the inbound links.
Why does Google/Apple need to curate everything?
During our seed round, we had an angel promise us what we thought was a small fortune (!00k) on the condition that 80% of it be used to pay for chart-boosting apps.
We thought hard about it and even got on a few calls with US companies (recommended to us by others in the community) who said they invoked a variety of "white-hat" techniques (whose vague descriptions sounded quite grey to me...) to guarantee a quick rise in rankings and app store success. These are companies that are operating despite Apple making efforts to stop this gaming of the app store.
Ultimately, we were not comfortable with accepting the term sheet with this clause and we never closed on the deal. I'm thrilled that this happened and I didn't have to give a dime to these sleaze balls.
Creating a system that's based on download count rather than curation at this scale isn't good for Apple and it isn't good for iOS Users. There is awesome stuff coming out of both indie dev shops and bigger development houses alike. Apple would do well to drive users towards software that makes its devices sing than to reward whoever has engineered an insidious viral loop or brought a briefcase of cash down to Boston black hats.
The best one defined as top 1 in app stores for apps category? :-)
I'd be happy with a few more category levels. Exile the pay to win games to their own corner and hopefully introduce some sensible limits.
> The “top” list simply rewards developers for getting as many people as possible to buy or download the app once. There’s no reason to optimize for longer-term satisfaction or higher engagement after purchase.
I personally find tremendous value from browsing the "Top Grossing" list. Being in the "Top Grossing" list is some indication on both long term satisfaction and engagement. It tells me that the application has generated real value for their customers and they are speaking with the wallets and not just with their ratings/reviews.
They're using 80+ signals to steer recommendations including the user's install history, location, and G+ network/reviews. I'd bet Apple is doing much of the same - they may even have had similar sessions at WWDC.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Od2SuL2igA
Certainly worth a watch before agreeing with Marco that no one in the world cares about a user's experience on Android devices after they're sold.
It's not an infallible system, but life isn't about being fair. It's not apple's job to ensure fairness, it's Apple's job to do a good job delivering what people want. A lot of people want what is popular, even if it's not always the best.
With the top list system I at least have some chance to get there. With 'editorially selected apps' I wouldn't because I have neither contacts to Apple nor to A-list bloggers.
Apple doesn't select apps for features solemnly on quality. There are other factors that sometimes have the stink of corruption to them. (Like the angry birds story: Only a success after Rovio got a publisher who could call up Apple and talk about a feature.)
http://blog.mobtest.com/2013/05/app-engagement-is-a-much-bet...
- editorial (although this can be gamed in a different way - a bunch of PR/marketing folks with strong relationships with Apple employees would suffice),
- reviews/ratings (also gameable)
- some algo for how long users continue to own/open/use an app after they download it (almost impossible to game, because it's linked to fundamental use).
With this combo - the rich will still get richer, but at least they will continue to be quality.
I just realised - I don't think I've ever "browsed" the app store. I've only ever searched for the thing I'm looking for, and used the first 10 results to gauge whether it exists. It didn't seem worthwhile because I knew there were squillions of apps, so why try to read through them one by one?
1. http://9to5mac.com/2013/06/10/tim-cook-talks-numbers-at-appl...
This would keep the top list 'fresh'.
Correction: I did just download the 10.8.4 update from the App Store and I found one app online a while back that only offered a download link through the App Store.
This is clearly false. If you have a free app, you obviously want that so you get money from in-app purchases / ad revenue.
Anyone want to comment on the merits and drawbacks of applying a similar solution to an app store, and any ideas for mitigating the problems?
Anyone want to build a startup: An Android app store with HN-inspired ranking system?