by jscore on 4/12/13, 3:04 PM with 97 comments
by jacquesm on 4/12/13, 4:02 PM
Whether or not AppGratis could have seen this coming is debatable, but the product was solid and seemed to have served a genuine need. If the app store would not be broken in many respects then AppGratis would have never been able to carve out the niche that it had.
App curation at the level that AppGratis was doing is really hard work, and you can't blame them for wanting to be compensated for that hard work. So a certain percentage of paid promotion is a fairly obvious step to make the model viable imo.
Their biggest mistake - if you can call it that - was probably to be too good at what they were doing.
In the AppStore no threat to Apple is too big to fail. Better remember that if you are successful with an app you wrote and you are possibly in competition with some portion of the Apple empire.
by ultimoo on 4/12/13, 4:28 PM
And now, we are going back to policies controlled by 'guidelines' and rules and terms and conditions of large corporations -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Blackberry. Either we as a developer community got lost somewhere; or this was a careful, well thought-out move by the said corporations. And it is only getting stronger as people are replacing laptops with tablets and so on.
I'm not commenting on the AppGratis fiasco, I couldn't care less about it. Sorry for ranting.
by Irregardless on 4/12/13, 4:34 PM
> But sources close to [Apple] say it was more than a little troubled that AppGratis was pushing a business model that appeared to favor developers with the financial means to pay for exposure.
http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgrat...
That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in their app. They didn't confirm or deny that in their "Here's the Full Story" blog post, nor does it say anything about their business model on their website.
In any case, that supposedly has nothing to do with the two official reasons for which they were most recently banned. First is 2.25:
> Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.
But they had encountered that problem before and cleared it with Apple. So the only new one is 5.6:
> Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind.
Seems a little odd to remove an app with 12 million users over such a minor detail when it could be resolved in a few seconds -- just remove push notifications. Does Apple ever give official responses on these issues?
by LinaLauneBaer on 4/12/13, 4:15 PM
When this whole AppGratis thing came up a few days ago I had an interesting discussion about that with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He told me that according to German law it would have been illegal to what the ad companies wanted me to do: To falsify the apps my own app is displaying for taking money.
I don't want to judge AppGratis for what they are doing but to me it feels not right. They may not break any US/... law but still… I think it also depends on how exactly they promote apps inside their own app. If they clearly mark it as a promotion/ad then I think it is fine. The comparison the author of the blog post makes only holds water if they did mark their promotions as ads because Google is clearly highlighting/declaring paid links as such…
by 2pasc on 4/12/13, 4:15 PM
AppGratis is a media, and like all media, it runs on advertising. The quality of apps promoted is shown in the fact that many apps stayed high in the ranking after the promotion and most apps (95%+) never paid to be featured by AppGratis. There was a cost - the cost of giving away an app with in App purchase credits or what have you. Do you know many black hat marketing Companies with 20,000 - 5 stars ratings from consumers all over the world? I doubt eHow would have 5 star ratings...
Maybe AppGratis became too big for its own good, but still. But we are not talking about scams like offer walls and shady newsfeed hacks.
What I see is a bunch of jealous people that are now coming out of the hood to kick the CEO on the floor - and he is obviously hurting.
by crazygringo on 4/12/13, 5:40 PM
It's the fact that a popular app, downloaded millions of times, existing for years, can suddenly be yanked by Apple, without any kind of reasonable "due process", or even reasonable warning. At a whim.
It's the arbitrariness of it, and the fact that it could happen to any developer, that's scary. Talking about whether or not AppGratis is a good/bad company is a complete distraction from the part that actually matters.
by mikecane on 4/12/13, 4:16 PM
I stopped reading right there.
by gyardley on 4/12/13, 4:40 PM
The advertising-free 'meritocracy' the author wants has never existed - even before the influx of paid app promotion, Apple could arbitrarily send an app to the top of the paid or free charts simply by featuring it.
by ishansharma on 4/12/13, 3:45 PM
Even description was deceptive: "I pick one app, contact developers and try to make it free for a day" (Don't remember exactly)
There's no reason for anyone to get angry about this. Apple has removed even App Shopper app (which was a genuine one), removing this paid app promotion app was a no brainer.
by potatolicious on 4/12/13, 7:13 PM
The problem here is that Apple is creating a confusing, inconsistent, and highly luck-based environment. This is in many ways similar to why entrepreneurship is often highly lacking in poorly governed countries.
Whether or not the rules are justifiable is a secondary concern to whether or not the rules are evenly and consistently applied. Apple wants a walled garden, fine, but we cannot have a walled garden where the majority of apps breaking the rules get away with it, and it's a random draw as to who gets the enforcement hammer.
If there's one thing that's poisonous to a healthy market it's uncertainty.
by stickfigure on 4/12/13, 5:57 PM
In the second corner: One blowhard with a blog.
It seems pretty obvious who has credibility in this fight.
by nugget on 4/12/13, 3:44 PM
by tudorconstantin on 4/12/13, 6:32 PM
Did someone forced the millions of users to use appgratis? It's not like you create a recommendation app that promotes shitty apps and 10 million users suddenly use it. No, that app has to bring some value. I'd never use such an app, but there are many more others who are. Let the economy speak for itself and as long as the app is not doing illegal things let it be supported or killed by the market.
It is like saying that google should be closed because it shows shitty pages for some searches.
by ig1 on 4/12/13, 4:34 PM
For the FTC guidelines on this see:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20635261/FTC-Guides-Concerning-the...
by NathanKP on 4/12/13, 4:08 PM
There have been numerous times when I've been searching for a good app in a particular category and the app store search results are very bad. For example try searching for "panoramic photo app". You'll get numerous results but all of the top ones are complete crap.
I'd like to see Apple allow at least one service which actually filters out all the garbage apps to show only the decent ones. Or at least improve their own service to manually ban the crapware apps to the bottom. Also the "one free app a day" model is a nice and effective way to spotlight interesting apps compared to Apple's staff picks, which aren't updated frequently enough.
by seivan on 4/12/13, 3:44 PM
by unreal37 on 4/12/13, 6:44 PM
To paraphrase the author, "Apple should control the rankings of an app in the app store, and it should not be influenced by illicit methods".
Now, suddenly, paying a third-party to advertise your app inside their app is an "illicit method" of getting it discovered.
It's called advertising. Developers can choose (or choose not) to pay money to promote there app in dozens of places and the app will increase in ranking in the App Store because advertising works.
It's like saying you want people to discover movies by going to the theater and choosing them by only by name, and NOT by watching trailers, TV commercials or viewing the posters. It's just a ridiculous argument that all advertising is by definition bad.
by tudorconstantin on 4/12/13, 6:44 PM
by daemon13 on 4/12/13, 5:21 PM
Apple's ban does not help in improving users' [that's us] experience. A better response from Apple would be fixing core of the matter.
I recall that couple of years ago Apple purchased app search&discovery start-up for circa $50M. Looks like reverse integration took place... unfortunately.
I discovered more high quality apps on HN than in App Store.
by programminggeek on 4/13/13, 12:46 PM
First of all, if results can be hand ordered is it a meritocracy? No. Because it's a select individuals opinion. Can their opinion be bought? Yep.
Second, can you buy popularity? Yep. Then is it a meritocracy? Nope. If EA or Zynga puts out a game and spends $10 million promoting it and uses their other apps to make it popular, is that a meritocracy when it shows up at the top of a search result? No. It isn't.
Search engines aren't a meritocracy. The best results don't win. The most relevant thing isn't always given. They are an attempt to return relevant information, but how that relevance is determined is not necessarily merit related at all. It just has to solve the user problem. It can be done in any order that the search engine provider deems fit.
For example, Google shows ads alongside the search results. The top ads aren't merit related. They are profit related. Google puts paid results above real results. Google puts money above relevance.
When you are talking about millions of dollars being thrown around, it is no longer about merit, it's about influence and those are not the same thing.
by yohann305 on 4/12/13, 4:24 PM
by lnanek2 on 4/12/13, 6:20 PM
by kunai on 4/12/13, 6:29 PM
It was disheartening to see knee-jerk reactions by the HN community. We've built such an intellectually sound and interesting community; one that bases its opinion on fact itself, and not emotion.
Let's keep it that way.
by anoncow on 4/12/13, 6:17 PM
So all that AppGratis had to do was make sure the apps they promoted were not crappy. Review the submitted apps and factor in (genuine) votes by end-users. This way they would have added value to the ecosystem.
If Apple/Google banned such an app from their appstore, I would have been pissed.
But I understand. It is their marketplace. They make the rules. There is no free market and no democracy. Those were just ideals, long forgotten and never to be seen again.
I would continue typing and go into a rant on how the Appstore is a monopoly. But I know it isn't. And even an oligopoly doesn't make me happy.
(I haven't used AppGratis.)
by austenallred on 4/12/13, 4:25 PM
Were 100% of the app recommendations "sponsored"? Were those that were "sponsored" marked as such?
The comparison is made to black-hat SEO, but having a list of apps as well as some sponsored apps is fine if they are marked as such. The article makes the comparison to black-hat links, but including "sponsored" links is what Google does with AdWords/PPC and is completely legitimate. So what did it look like with AppGratis? It's all about organization and transparency.
by jarsj on 4/12/13, 6:48 PM
by TallboyOne on 4/12/13, 4:43 PM
by nsxwolf on 4/12/13, 5:56 PM
It is, after all, how they obtained their new App Store (Chomp acquisition). Why not sit back and let people create better app stores, and when you see the next revolutionary one, acquire it?
by jrockway on 4/12/13, 9:29 PM
by tootie on 4/12/13, 5:04 PM
by jjellyy on 4/13/13, 3:00 AM
by alegen on 4/13/13, 12:29 PM
That's where I stopped reading...
by recoiledsnake on 4/12/13, 4:29 PM
Why?
Anyway it's abundantly clear that Apple is failing at that task, especially with new changes to the way search results are displayed.
by alekseyk on 4/12/13, 4:15 PM
That's his whole beef and the reason for calling them a 'black hat' marketing company?
Using that logic, if application is featured on a popular web site where company paid PR to advertise makes the company in question a black hat marketing company who is fucking everything up for everybody else?
Bullshit.