How famous people rate Google Play Store apps | Hacker News Reader

How famous people rate Google Play Store apps

txti.es

67 pointsangry-hacker32 comments

Some, who seem legit. (I lost my txti password) Unfortunately nothing too interesting:

Larry Ellison (Oracel): https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=105810347937...

Michael Dell (Dell): https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=100523784851...

Few Google execs:

https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=106087880965... https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=100873628951... https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=105332691637...

Anyway, if you want to help find something interesting or stalk your friends habits:

1) Find their Google+ page (easy) 2) Get their ID - View Source and control+F for oid=" 3) Paste the id to: https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=YOURIDNUMBER...

I find it funny Google own employees don't rate apps, probably because of privacy. Or maybe they have double accounts? It means they have to constantly ignore play store spamming you to rate them to get recommendations, see what your friends share etc. Everything in directly against how the Play Store wants them to use Play store.

Well the fact that they don't use this as intended says a lot. Also the part minding about privacy.

Probably a lot of the workers use some kind of corporate accounts to test apps etc. But I still find it ironic everyone's 'app history' is so dull. Matt Cutts is the only one I've found from Google that looks like it's actually his personal Android ID.

Also, it's possible privacy breach in a sense if you find the ID of some celeb, paste it to the same Android Store format, it sometimes redirects it to the person's profile, who is the actual owner of the celeb page.

I tried some Playboy models who have for some reason public Google+ pages/profiles and often behind them are some random marketing guys.

Example: https://plus.google.com/+MichaelAnthony/ Somewhat famous musician. Id is 116849062506250163587

https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=116849062506... store page.. ?

The part minding about "privacy" and "not knowing what will be shared" is unsubstantiated though, there is no argument against or for that being part of their reason.

All we know, is that they rate very little. And if they're like me or many it's simply that they don't care about rating stuff, I couldn't care less about people reading the amount of stars I give.

The play store on my phone never nags me to rate apps. The apps themselves, yes, but not the play store.

Maybe nagging is wrong word, but for me the Store App's homepage constantly asks to rate apps I'm using to get better recommendations.

There is also section "People" on the left menu to see what your circle have been doing in the store.

Ah, I know what you are talking about. It's just that I use the appstore to search for apps I need/want. I never browse the homepage or the categories and recommendations, etc. Different uses, different experiences, I guess.

I think it's more that a lot of people don't really rate apps. I think I'm a pretty big consumer of apps, and I basically have rated 4 or 5 apps?

Yeah, same here, but for me it's because of privacy. I'm sure it same for a lot of people.

But IMO it really rips the Play Store apart, you don't want to even rate/comment your favourite apps and I'm sure I'm not the small minority.

Why can't they tie rating to your G+ account (well it was tied to Google account even before) and show only your first name/or as anonymous if you wish. And not show it the whole world. Think twice when you rate that "Gay kamasutra" app.

The fact that Googlers on high positions don't rate them tells a lot imo. Either they care about their privacy or they don't care? Hard to believe they don't care... maybe they don't have enough time. In either way it looks bad.

I think the reason why Matt Cutts is so popular is because despite his high position and wealth, people see REAL PERSON behind him, his honest and... human. Not some robotic executive behind a name, who doesn't give a shit. Also he's Google Play store ratings prove that.

Don't forget that there is a crowd that uses the play store, but isn't allowed to rate (aka "No G+ account").

Imagine how happy these people are, when apps (or anything) nags them to rate..

> I find it funny Google own employees don't rate apps

It might have something to do with how Google runs an internal version of Google+ only for employees.

Doesn't stop Matt Cutts though :)

Didn't he leave google?

To get someone's (or your own) Google+ ID, you can also click the profile picture and copy the oid parameter out of the URL. (Pulling it out of "View Source" didn't work for some reason.)

I thought you were going to tell me things about famous people. This is a list of tech executives.

Well, I posted it to have a discussion and maybe people are able to find something interesting too?

Yanis Varoufakis, Greek's Finance Minister:

https://play.google.com/store/people/details?id=114760450440...

Mark Cuban's low ratings for SnapChat and other messaging apps likely stems from or lead to his investment in Cyber Dust [0].

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/maseenaziegler/2014/04/08/mark-c...

Or vice-versa: maybe the fact that he dislikes the existing messaging apps led him to invest in one he does like.

"stems from or lead to"

Ops, sorry.

Partially my fault because I realize now that it should be "led to" instead of "lead to".

I felt kind of weird going thru the list.

>{X} person likes tinder

And I was like uhm, this is too personal. Then I gave it some thought, the person who has tinder and okcupid rated works for a company that wants all my personal information to sell ads. So perhaps this is only fair? I'd guess it would be (or it is, since some have empty profiles, perhaps by choice) hypocrite of them to complain about this.

I tried to rate an App once and got something similar to this (the current language):

"Ratings and reviews on Google Play are a great way to tell your friends about the apps and other content you love! These are linked to your Google+ profile and are public."

I'm not interested in that type of public activity. I could somewhat understand this for a full review, but certainly not for a simple 1 - 5 star rating.

You're already posting a public review, does it really matter if it also gets posted to Google+? I guess I don't have any objections to it because I'm not aware of anyone from my group of friends that actually uses Google+.

Yes, because it's not anonymized if I want it to be, but is indexable with my real name instead. Even if I remove my G+ account, many 3rd party services will index that data and keep it public.

Business Insider's writeup of this discussion: http://www.businessinsider.in/A-hacker-site-says-it-has-disc...

Headline is: "A hacker site says it has discovered the apps Mark Cuban loves - and those he doesn't"

Link to discussion about that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9553236

Honestly, this is one reason why I don't like rating stuff on the net. I realize that tying validated identities to ratings is important to make manipulation more difficult, but I don't like the thought of leaving a public trail of my likes/dislikes and, for restaurants and hotels, locations.

I'd be more inclined (though still quite reserved) if there was an option to leave a rating that appears publicly anonymous, while still being logged in, retaining Google et al.'s ability to track me to combat manipulation and whatever more nefarious purposes come to mind.

It's legit -- just chatted with Cuban about it http://www.businessinsider.com/the-apps-mark-cubans-loves-an...

Eric Schmidt obviously has nothing to hide, because maybe he shouldn't be doing anything [..] in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew

honestly i was thinking we will see actually what they say about apps, but all we can see is they +1 it

+1 will be publicly visible (for apps) even if you you have turned it off from Google+ profile page... I'm not sure if people realize it. It's also possible that people click +1 accidentally. I know I did when I reviewed my history, I have never ever wanted to +1 anything on store but I had for 5 apps.

>famous

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