Beware of these lame App Store techniques
neotokyo.vg
neotokyo.vg
Examples (need the Mac App Store app to see the reviews):
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icd-any-musics-to-cd/id61667... (mostly reviews by accounts who only review apps by this one developer)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audio-studio-pro/id598189439... (mass upvoting of fake reviews, downvoting of real reviews)
Ironically through a bug in the App Store the only apps that display any 'stars' in search results are apps that weren't update for months and said spammer apps that can gather unusual many reviews in a short time frame. (In a slow category like music getting even 5 ratings/reviews takes weeks. Suspicious apps usually get more than 5 ratings in one day.)
Then there's the trick to register your app as a handler for all possible 3 letter file extensions. (Perform a search for 'extension:fzx' or for any other nonsense 3 letter extension in the Mac App Store). Which hijacks OS X' built in "couldn't find app to handle somefile.fzx. do you want to search the app store?" and drives a lot of traffic to said apps - without being any helpful to the user in handling said file. One such app is:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ftp-client-professional/id46...
That app topped overall grossing charts for weeks until the ratings got so bad that even the dullest user won't download it.
The Mac App Store currently is a spammed mess and it really throws a bad light on the OS X software ecosystem and Apple's platform.
Two reviews is very minor but clearly just the Glide dev making a few accounts and downloading and then reviewing. But yeah, they're not very clever about it.
Just mark / report the reviews as inappropriate and put the reason for 'Suspect written by competitor' or something to that effect and they're usually removed pretty quickly.
Huh? He worked his ass to make the app, it should NOT have it fail just because some idiot made fake bad reviews. Let it fail or succeed on it's own merits (or lack thereof).
Other stuff has also been happing since day one of earth (like, theft or murder) but we still take then too hard. Why not this?
(And please don't compare a bad app store review to murder. A little perspective is a healthy thing.)
Also, although review can greatly affect sales 1 bad review should not. If you have any common sense you would have a few friends buy the app, review it positively, and that would offset the one negative review from your competitor.
Which is beside the point. It's not Apple's whimsy that's under accusation here, it's the BS behaviour of a competitor.
>The uncertainty of such of a marketplace has to factor into your outlook. (No one assesses their business without considering both risks and opportunities)
That doesn't mean you should bend over and take it. Risks can be eliminated, especially if they are non essential to the operation of the marketplace, and even harmful to it's owner.
The history of this particular marketplace has shown that Apple has some willingness to listen to it's developers (e.g the reversal of the Obj-C only policy, changes they made to the approval process after assurances for it's betterment by Cook, continuous automation and fixes to the provisioning profile handling, the changes to allow easier giving your app to third party developers for testing etc).
Am I missing something?
vg.cctld.authdns.ripe.net, asia.zone.vg and europe.zone.vg are pointing to suspended.meridiantld.net. Only ns1.root-servers.vg replies with dns{1,2}.stabletransit.com.
It was never a high seller, but there's a clear and definite drop in sales after the 1 star review appeared.
I don't like how the app store makes it hard to find older reviews. I don't like how I can't comment on reviews. I don't like how I get no ability to reply through iTunes Connect to try and reach out to resolve any issues mentioned (when there are legitimate issues). I don't much like that the world is full of spiteful arseholes, either. Not much I can do about any of that unfortunately.
It actually was more blatant before - my app had two reviews, one from "Michal", one from "Mi", both giving my app a 1 star rating (it has a 4.4 star rating average otherwise), and both suggesting users download a competing app. The username of the person that publishes that competing app is Michal.
In the comments suggestion of that competitor's app, someone complains how they spammed bad reviews for their competitors, so apparently we weren't the only target.
It's more amusing than annoying for us. We have over 500 reviews for that app, so their one or two bad reviews don't do much damage. Our file manager is a minor app for us, and we have over 250,000 downloads of it. Despite their efforts, their file manager has less than 50,000 downloads. Their time would probably be better served by listening to their customers and improving their app, as opposed to trying to run down the apps of their competitors.
From my informal analysis, a bad one-star review is most dangerous in the initial days after an app has been deployed. Once you have hundreds (or thousands) of reviews up already, people get diminishing returns in trashing competitors apps. I also think Google watches the install/uninstall ratio more closely than reviews, since it's easier to game the system with in-store reviews.
neotokyo.vg has expired
Please contact your registrar or go to the Registry website
The domain has expired 15887 days ago on 01 January 1970 and is pending renewal or deletion.why .... this was a pre-internet blog !
Anyhow, I wonder if this is a fault at with his hosts (possibly a variable not assigned a value in some managed code) as the expires age happens to be the start date of the UNIX time stamp (epoch)
And just as importantly, pre-DNS. Its impressive that a domain expired a decade before DNS was invented.
Good point :)
> Its impressive that a domain expired a decade before DNS was invented.
It's not that impressive as that's not a random date - displaying the start of epoch would likely mean that a value wasn't assigned to a variable, so when it's being read back (and converted to a human readable format), it's defaulting to the earliest date in epoch (1970). Just like how most languages default the value of an integer to 0 (zero). (in fact I'd wager that it is being held as an integer and the Jan date is the result of a conversion of that int defaulted at 0 into a human readable format)
Anyway, Glide seems to have gotten in trouble with Apple:
http://gigaom.com/2013/05/30/glide-combines-cloud-accounts-o...
I reported dozens of these as spam to iTunes, and a large number of them have been taken down.
>how long a user used the app prior to reviewing
Unfortunately, if the app crashes right after loading it on your phone then you won't have a very long time of use before reviewing it. I'm not sure your 1 star review should be discounted in this situation.
If you're reading this, and you are interested in startups, all your spidey senses should be tingling like mad. This a Pain Point with capital P's. Review systems are hard, they have subtleties, they are important, they suck.
Though it doesn't contain any images :(
I had on e goofed up my app and got a rash of about 40 bad reviews. I fixed the problem and added feature that asks users to rate my app. In a couple of months, the problem was dead and buried.
Perhaps you are under the misguided impression that the actual Sherlock only took novel kind of crimes, and not murders, theft, blackmail and other stuff that has been going on for ages.