Now that app submission is free, what about 'app spam?' 57
We intentionally left out a certain reservation when we posted about Palm removing the $50 fee for app submission in to the official App Catalog. It's a great thing, making it free and easy to get apps in the Official App Catalog, which unquestionably is the method the vast majority of webOS users use to find and install apps. Add in that current developers get their submission fees back and there doesn't seem to be much to complain about.
Until, well, there is, as the comments in that post show. They mirror a concern we have long had, namely that the $50 fee served as a way to limit the amount of low-quality apps in the catalog. We'll let Akira71 from the comments speak for us here:
Having to pay that fee meant we had to carefully consider what we were doing and we tried to put out quality because of it. That fee kept app spammers out.
Our own Rob Werlinger has addressed the issue of 'app spam' before, but in this brave new world of free submission it's clearly worth highlighting again. Generally we're all for open, but that needs to be combined with tools from Palm to help the quality apps float to the surface and be more discoverable. Fortunately, Palm's Ben Combee says the right things in his tweet above.
So put us on the side of letting everybody in as long as there are tools for enabling us to find the great apps. Palm says those tools are coming - we're standing by.
57 Comments
Boo yah!
All this activity is very exciting. Even key people leaving Palm.New fresh minds will be hired, don't worry. It all means that we have an exciting year ahead of us.
I still remember when the app catalog had like less than 20 apps to pick from , lol. Good times ahead for us and Palm and HP!
I think a better question is will just $50 bucks make mainstream companies make apps.
The 50.00 never prevented mainstream apps. Some of the issues where just the ability to access parts of the phones that would allow for what some of these guys wanted to do (Shazam needing Mic access for instance) or just market share or market perception. Market perception is the hardest to overcome. Hopefully we will see more and more apps from mainstream companies. On the other hand a lot of these mainstream companies were indies at one point and so I hope Invasive Bamboo becomes mainstream. It wouldn't surprise me to see a few WebOS development companies become more mainstream in the near future.
yeah pretty much my point. the $50 won't change that and to me it's a much bigger issue. I guess i should have phrased the question as how do you get better mainstream apps cause this won't matter much to me.
But just for clarification when i say mainstream i don't mean whether a small development companies becoming a bigger more mainstream company.
by mainstream i mean mainstream properties and mainstream companies most people have heard of. Like cnbc, cnn, etrade, mint, etc. Shazam is nice but honestly i'd never heard of it. regardless, the sort of companies i mentioned are the sort i was referring to. I mean there is no technial reasons like no mic api a cnn couldn't make an app lust like engaget with cnn videos and comments and news, and that applies to i'd think the majority of other companies of the ilk i'm talking about. because i think that is what we aren't getting, what i want, and what i think attracts people. I don't want to disrespect anyone's hard work and they do have value but i think a lot of consumers look at a phone and say, I have Etrade. Where's the etrade app? As opposed to where's the third party app that gives me stock news but won't securely access my portfolio. Or they want an ESPN app to get so they can't get it.
can't wait to see all the new quotations apps out there!
If I knew how to do it, I'd create an app that contained every bit of public domain content from the biggest offenders, give it a name that sorts to the top, and update it every week. The description would say that this is all that is needed rather than ever buy or download the spam apps littering the catalog.
Is that passive/aggressive, or what? Clever, too... ANy deve want to take a shot at that?
Send me a PM and we can talk.
And why isn't Preware, the best app out there, in the app catalog still?
I think conceptually it creates security issues. We are blessed with a homebrew community that is VERY security concious, so I don't think the issue is Preware. It is probably the issue of opening up such a category where another homebrew catalog could be less talented and inadvertently let in something bad.
I know I NEVER think twice about downloading from Preware. They are rock solid. But they don't work for Palm, and I am assuming the risk for trusting the Preware guys as much as I do.
I'd love to see Preware in the App Catalog, but I'm not sure it's possible without unintended risk. Hopefully Ron or someone else from OSinterlas can chime in on this...
Also, from what I gather, Preware needs to install some hooks to the OS that apps installed from the App Catalogue aren't capable of installing, such as the once separate, Package Manager Service.. Though I could be wrong..
I do believe some of the new features that HP/PALM are working on to feature good apps will be effective. It is nice to know they at least are aware of the problem and are addressing it.
I think I heard Brighthouse cry with sheer joy.
No kidding. Right along with AppBookShop! We already have problems with worthless junk clogging up the app catalog dropping the $50 will only make things worse.
thay should use sum of the ideas from the app idea box
While free submissions will mean more junk style apps similar to what's in the Android and Apple stores. One thing will happen, the main number of apps will increase. Which seems to be what the masses consider success. Amount over quality. Sad but true.
So this could help get people to switch over to the newer phones once released should the app numbers increase.
That's how I see it.
That's the point. This is sad from my point of view (Newness Developments wants wants to offer quality). But hey, it's all about numbers...
In response to "it's all about numbers" please see my post on the previous article:
"That's like saying we choose the family car based on how many different models of spark plugs or headlights I can get from Pep boys. I'ts nice to know I have a choice between bosch and champion, but my decision isn't based on knowing that every brand in the world has a spark plug that will fit my car - especially if 80% of them are of such poor quality that I'd never consider them under any circumstance. Yes, having a large catalog is important, but quantity isn't mutually exclusive of quality.
If you think they are mutually independent, then I challenge you to try it in your restaurant choices. For the next few months, don't go to Mortons or Ruth's Chris... Every week you should have a big night out at Waffle House - and always order the steak. You will agree quickly that the quality is lacking even though the quantity is there..."
Ruth's Chris or Morton's for steak? You're not setting the bar very high.
Also, your metaphor wasn't very good. It was pretty Waffle House.
speaking for myself, my area doesn't have really anything better than those. There ARE poor folk out there, and sometimes the better steakhouses choose not to build in those areas. Indianapolis here. I love steak and steak restaurant banter.
+1
I think our spam-to-quality ratio is already as bad as it could get.
It can't be any worse.
I disagree with Akira71's premise that the $50 fee was keeping spammers away. All you have to do is count up the spam-apps from the 4 most prolific spammers to see what huge percent of the catalog is garbage. Then count up the number of posts in this article, the previous article, and throughout the forums... and you can see that the $50 fee might have stopped a few good developers, but it didn't stop the spammers.
My fear is that it slowed the spammers just a little, and now the floodgate will make the last few months look like a spam-free zone.
Palm has to fix this...It is an embarrassment to the brand, and it keeps good app developers away.
To address your comment I will go back to my prior position, when at Palm recently, and I asked how Brighthouse was able to get so many apps in at 50 per app at what appears to be a loss. I was told at that time that Brighthouse had submitted all of there apps during the time when the submissions were free (pre-January) and that due to the sheer number, Palm did not want to flood the App Catalog with the same app over and over so they trickled only so many out at a time. I have no doubt that Brighthouse did not pay for every single one of there apps. I also have no doubt they were not the only one doing this. No one will incur a loss that large for no gain and only a bad reputation.
Likewise I agree with others here that often the only real good gauge the media latches on to is how many apps are on your platform. Therefore Brighthouse, while offering junk, does server the Palm community by artificially inflating the catalog total count. I am hoping now that a lot of better quality apps do make it in now that there is no fee. Time will tell. We have 13 apps in the App Catalog and so far not once have we wasted our money or thought the 50 dollars was too high a barrier because we believed in what we released and we did it to offer unique and fun things for the WebOS community. There are a lot of other good developers wanting to do the same and surely that means as a whole Palm community will win.
Short term though, you will see more of the app spammers. I believe in the App Store for iPhone Brighthouse has more than 1300 hundred apps. I would expect them all here eventually.
A while back I ran the numbers using the download counts in the catalog feed. If Brighthouse had to pay $50 per app, they would be at a net loss, while if they had a single app with even half the number of purchases they would have made money.
It would have been better if Palm were to cut or reduce the yearly fee and charge $25/app like the Android market.
I understand your point, but I think the conclusion doesn't match the argument.
If Brighthouse or Dijit loaded up the catalog before Palm was charging, they should have made the charges retroactive so they would withdraw apps that wouldn't justify $50.
Instead of refunding everyone, they should have started charging for stuff in the pipeline in hopes of having less cr@p, rather than opening the gates for more...
I know that the counter is that people had already invested time in apps and it's unfair to change the rules. I think it's unfair to change the rules in either direction. Palm could easily make it right for them without publishing the apps.
Refer to my previous post where I suggested that $50 refunds won't motivate as much as sending all the extra Pre handsets out to developers and rewarding quality would.
I'm sure I don't have the best solution, but I sure think refunding and waving fees at this point is one of the worst.
I think a counter argument needs to be published. Personally, I do not want more Brighthouse, Appible, App Bookshop, etc. But then again, I take the long view.
The news organizations (and potential users) do not know about quality. They simply compare raw numbers. That's what they see, that is what they use. iPhone has 100,000 apps, Android 25,000, webOS has 3,000. It looks puny next to iPhone and Android.
For webOS to compete, they need those kinds of numbers as well. The only way to get them in the end, is through companies like these. I say let them in, let webOS get the high number of apps it needs to compete.
Do not forget, webOS can innovate to highlight the quality apps while still maintaining the ability for users to find the apps we might dislike. One mans junk is another man's treasure.
Be careful what you wish for. If we get this wish, we will ultimately lose out. Akira71 also had a legit point about new/yound developer's not being able to enter due to the barrier. They will bring with them some innovative ideas and great apps that we might have never seen if this was left in place.
At least palm can also hold true the the montra "There's an app for that". For me personally that was the appeal towards the iphone OS, I could literally search and fine whatever app that fell under the type of category I needed and install it. Even if I used it once it was there and discarded, plus it was free. I dont want to have to pay for an app that I'll used 2-3 times during the lifetime of the phone, I'd rather pay for the most used high quality apps...
Another MAJOR change Palm needs to make is to have a trial period for paid apps. I've spent quite a bit on apps that turned out to be terrible. Especially new apps that hadn't been reviewed by users yet.
I should have 24 hours to decide. I have multiples of several apps because it took several purchases before I found one that suited my needs.
I actually bought a Dijit app when I first got my Pre, not realizing what cr@pware and catalog spamming was all about. I had a long history with PalmOS and I don't recall finding spam apps on Handango or the other app stores...
agreed, i think android lets ppl try for 24 hours after purchase and if you hate it it refunds ur paypal or something. thats pretty nifty and something like that could def be huge on webos because i have the same problem.
how about adding debit card payment options to the app store for uk users ? Not all of us use credit cards over here ya know
thats exactly what i'm hoping for in the next update. cause i only have a debit card, and no interest in a credit card just for an app or two
My "credit card" is tied to my bank account. It's a debit/ATM card with a Visa logo on it. Pretty common in the States now, not so in the UK?
nope most uk debit cards are now maestro/solo so can not be used as a payment option in the app store
Ask your bank. From what I gather some banks started offering Visa/MasterCard debit cards earlier this year, to replace the Maestro/Cirrus stuff. Other banks will offer these soon as well from what I hear.
Welcome to the Brighthouse Labs App Catalog :-(
*edit* double post sorry
Well, this will most likely get all (most) of the apps that are in the web distribution feed up to the app catalog. I designed an app called CryptoNotes (see www.hbconcepts.com ), mostly for myself, and put it up as a Homebrew. Then, the web distribution came about and it was still free, so I put it on there as well. The only reason it was never in the App Catalog was the 50$, since it wasn't a money making app for me. So now, I just updated my app submission to the App Catalog.
All's that really needs to happen here is when the fall webOs update drops, they should update the app catalog and enable filtering. Patches have worked thus far for me, but I'd outright like to see some of the spammers disappear completely. Let the user choose what he/she see's and doesn't see. You'll either force spammers to quit or actually put something decent out.
Filtering and a 24 hour trial. If the people that the spammers trick in to downloading could decide not to pay, the cr@p apps wouldn't pay and they would lose their motivation. As it stands, many (myself included) bought some spam apps with no way to get a refund. It's a nice trap, and palm needs to close that loophole.
I just want the ability to filter out these annoying out-of-copyright books, sports teams, wallpapers, bikini-ware, and ringtones apps. If I never see another "Brighthouse", "Hotteez" or "AppBookShop" application it will be too soon.
I'm not saying that these apps are necessarily low quality or that they don't do what they claim, but from my perspective, all they do is pad the app count stats and fill up the "What's New" view. I can't find the wheat with all the chaff around.
i jus cant wait for the hp\plam deal to be done i want to see what hp is goin to do with all these moves
This is a desperation move by Palm that will only make things worse, not better.
The $50 fee isn't a deterrent to anyone who really wants to build and sell (or even give away) an app. There are already a lot of hobbyist type apps in the catalog. And it was never the reason major companies haven't developed apps for the Pre.
Palm's done nothing to attract major developers, and doesn't need to attract more hobbyists.
Unless Palm opens up the SDK, and supports lower level languages, the Pre will continue to be a hobbyist platform and 2nd tier game phone.
I think I seen in one of the vidoes that there is going to be a rating system in place in the new app catalog ..... And I think it is a good idea to make it free.. How can you make it a competition to get more and more apps than charge people to play??? That's not right if you want people to convert lots and lots of there apps then you can't charge them for doing it.. I'm not going to spend my time working to swich over 10 apps to help your catalog out then you charge me 500 dollers to do it you feel me .... I don't want crap in there either but you have to play the game and when I talk to a iphone person and they say I have 150000 apps and I say I have 3000 apps whos the new person trying to get a phone is going to chose??? You already know... I hate that part of the game but its all on perception... We all love the os but apps are what makes the smartphone world go round so lets keep it moving !!!!!
Dear HP/Palm,
You need to buy your way out of the application situation in the short term in order to compete.
Here is a better way to spend all those contest prize dollars you have been throwing around, like the $1 million hot apps contest.
(1) Up the budget to $2 million
(2) Find out the top 20 apps on the iPhone.
(3) Offer each company $50k to port their app over to WebOS
(4) Offer another $15k per year to supply updates, for 2 years
(5) Offer bonuses for WebOS-only features with the remaining $400k
(6) Market the heck out of these 20 apps
Or just save that money and........BUILD SOME BETTER HARDWARE!!!
Software is the Yin to hardware's Yang.
We need both.
Mark Hurd: "....it
The App I most want is the one that allows me to black list apps, developers and/or tags in the app cat such that they poof ne'er to return.
I'd pay Palm for an Enhanced App Cat
I really hate to admit it but in the mobile space, quality doesn't seem to win out over quantity. Look at pReader vs Kindle Mobile apps for other platforms
The App I most want is the one that allows me to black list apps, developers and/or tags in the app cat such that they poof ne'er to return.
I'd pay Palm for an Enhanced App Cat
I really hate to admit it but in the mobile space, quality doesn't seem to win out over quantity. Look at pReader vs Kindle Mobile apps for other platforms
The App I most want is the one that allows me to black list apps, developers and/or tags in the app cat such that they poof ne'er to return.
I'd pay Palm for an Enhanced App Cat
I really hate to admit it but in the mobile space, quality doesn't seem to win out over quantity. Look at pReader vs Kindle Mobile apps for other platforms
Case in point I would buy more apps during this lastest sale if I could filter or blacklist spammers. I got 20 so far. But dude, I don't have more hours to dedicate to trolling the app cat :( I apologize now to all those devs with really cool apps that I'll likely never know exist
Uh, you people DO know that you can STILL filter the App Categories by "Date, Price, Rating, etc. Right?
There's no need to trudge through "What's new" to find apps. If you want a new game, go to Categories > Games and sort by date newest to oldest.
Here's an idea: Make it free to publish Apps to the Store, but Palm keeps the first $50 from sales of each app that it would have paid to the developer. It would eliminate the risk for developers of niche products, free products, and products that may not move many units (it might also encourage more "trial" versions of paid apps). But it would still provide a barrier against spam apps, because each app would have to sell a lot more units before it paid off for the spammer. And the App Store would still generate _some_ revenue for Palm itself...
Ben's post is the right one. App Catalog quality starts with the app catalog itself, and I'm really encouraged by what he said.
Dave, ultimately that is all that matters. Even with the garbage that clutters the App Store for Apple, people have a great tool to navigate and find what they want and ignore what they don't. Ben is dead on that Palm will have to grow the App Catalog and move it to be top tier.
One thing that I did try to get across in my post earlier, is this. Even though we will see a lot of spammers and garbage, there will be an influx of quality. There were small indies that wanted to take a chance, but couldn't or didn't but they will now. That is what matters. So with Ben's comments and more app choices, the quality apps will float to the surface, just as they do now.
Palm needs to do a few things.
1) Free to release a single PAY app a month, but it costs money (like say $250) to release any pay apps after that. Free apps are free to list.
2) App Catalog Fixes!
a) "Most downloaded" section that you can display by "most downloaded today, this week, this month, this year, all time"
b) "By rating" section that uses a simple algorithm to sort the results. ie (if it's over 175 reviews, treat it as is. if it's 100-175, take rating and minus 0.5 stars. if it's 50-100, minus 1 star. if it's 25-50 reviews, minus 1.5 stars. if it's under 25 minus 2 stars.) for "tie breakers", sort by number of reviews. Color code the rating stars. Ie over 175 reviews = yellow stars. over 100 = green stars. over 50 = blue stars. rest are gray. I'm sick of seeing really crappy apps that are rated 5* by ONE person appear as a top rated app.
c) "Featured" section that rotates weekly amongst highly rated (with more than at least 100 reviews) apps.
d) "Hide Vendor". Yep, I can think of at least 3 that will make this list.
e) "New Apps". This section should NOT include updated apps.
f) "Demos". I wonder if it'd be possible for Palm to implement something where you can download ANY app as a "demo" for free, but you could only download the "demo" once (it keeps track of it) and it works for only 24 hours after you first open the "demo".
g) "By Genre". Needs to display top 5 (in a strip like how the "featured" looks right now) highest rated/most downloaded (see the algorithm thing) apps of this type.