iPhoneSavior.com Reports on Alleged App Store Ratings Scam

Love the graphic form iPhoneSavior. And I really dislike the fake comments. They are so obvious, but it's a hassle always having to read past them. I hope this discourages developers from posting fake comments. I think part of the problem is that when someone you know develops an app and asks you to comment, the temptation is always to give them a boost by giving the app a higher rating and nicer comment than it might otherwise deserve.

JIm

I was thinking about this idea for ever and I would have made a bet that this exists. It is so easy to get ten of your friends to vote 5 starts for every of your apps, that in a sense I thought of this as the default for bigger companies ...

Cheers Arend 

"the default for bigger companies"? you mean that lying/cheating the apps comments would be the norm as far as you're concerned? i certainly hope not. for companies of any size.

 Well, I guess not everybody. I mean, at least not largescale. But what is it if I ask a friend to write a nice review?

Is that tampering already?

What if I ask 10 friends?

I actually have exactly 2 close friends with iPhones... and of cause they buy all my apps, and of cause they make a nice review if I ask them to write one. And if I write an app for a customer, he/she is of cause asking her friends to write nice reviews. And since my company is super small sized, in larger companies this happens more often. That is why I said default. Look at the review for amazon, to give an example, at least one review is from the author or his best friend, and praises the book. Same here. I sort of look in the reviews for the one that are "favours", and I bet you will not find 10 apps, with at least 10 reviews each, that does not contain one super praise!

The funny thing is, I have a couple of apps with exactly 0 comments. You can be sure, that it wasn't tampered with :)

Cheers Arend

just because that is what YOU do, doesn't mean that it's what everyone else does. not everyone lies and cheats. now, if someone says "here's something, take a look, tell me/others what you think", and expects and gets an honest review, that's not cheating because the review 'chips' fall where they may.

and Arend, do note you've now just publicly let people know that you game your app software reviews meaning that nothing positive said about your app can be trusted. by the way, it's quite possible that your apps will be pulled - and rightly so - as well if Apple finds out.

probably time to stop making public confessions and defending AND admitting to bad behaviour. just a suggestion.

 relax, and read carefully

I never lied and cheated, and you should think about these kind of accusation before you make them. Because that is a personal defamation.

I was saying "nice review" not dishonest, besides that every post, review, or line you drop on iTunes, or anywhere, is your own personal opinion. So if you accuse my friends of lying this is a defamation too.

Lets have a close look at what you were thinking I wrote:

"probably time to stop making public confessions and defending AND admitting to bad behaviour. just a suggestion."

And please everyone join and go back to what I wrote, and read it again.

First: Me thinking of this as the default, doesn't mean I sanction it. I might say "Death is the default end of life", that surely doesn't mean I like it.

Second: I was raising a question, see the question marks ... do you understand the concept of conjunctive, or hypothetical?

Third: nice is not equal to dishonest

Forth: The last line I was writing was about me having apps with zero, 0, none, not a single, review ... what does this tell about me? That I hire an army of minions that have nothing better to do that rating my apps high?

Every rating system that contains subjective comments of people will be biased. And it is naive not assume that. And to add a personal opinion: the bigger the company, the more money involved, the higher the likelyhood that tampering with these systems will be. And I don't like that, but I take it for granted. It is very sad, undesireable, but still to be expected.

So we are on the same page here, but unfortunately you were jumping to conclusions? Why is that?

Cheers Arend

'relax'? ah, thanks. since you think i'm not. maybe you're the one who needs to relax. you're doing yourself no favours here. as for your 'advice'. follow it yourself.

you don't like the words 'lying' and 'cheating'? well, whatever you want to call it. you freely admitted repeatedly that you ask friends and associates to give positive reviews to your apps. that's gaming the system. you also said that other people's 'default' position is to do that same thing aka gaming the system.

your own posts keep condeming you. keep making them if you like. and i'll keep pointing out that you admitted and bragged about gaming the app review system. actually, why don't i just go ahead and cut-and-paste what you wrote about how you said you 1. game the review system, 2. ask others to game the system, 3. believe everyone games the system: 

It is so easy to get ten of your friends to vote 5 starts for every of your apps

and

But what is it if I ask a friend to write a nice review?

Is that tampering already?

What if I ask 10 friends?

I actually have exactly 2 close friends with iPhones... and of cause they buy all my apps, and of cause they make a nice review if I ask them to write one. And if I write an app for a customer, he/she is of cause asking her friends to write nice reviews. And since my company is super small sized, in larger companies this happens more often. That is why I said default.

the ONLY reason that you're now backpeddling - and ridiculously accusing me of 'defamation' - is because you're afraid of the consquences for what you've admitted doing.

 Okay, maybe you should ask somebody else, and this somebody is hopfully able to explain to you the difference between real and hypothetical.

Statement: If a sentence ends with a QUESTIONMARK aka "?" the content of the sentence is either a question, or refers to a hypothetical situation

Question: Do you understand that concept?

Statement: You are drawing conclusions about my or other peoples actions, based on a missunderstanding of language.

Statement: IF refers to a possibility, WHEN refers to an actual occurence

Example: "they make a nice comment if I ask them to write one", is not the same meaning as  "they write comments whenever I ask them" or "when I asked my friends, they wrote..." The first sentence is hypothetical and in the presence, the other refers to ation that took place in the past. I used the first one, the hypothetical.

Observation: It is super funny to see how you pervert what I wrote, missinterpret, and most importantly put words or opinions in my mouth

Example 1: "You don't like the words 'lying' and 'cheating'?" I never said I like or dislike a word, to be honest, words are neutral. I said, I am not a cheater and I am not lying.

Example 2:"you also said that other people's 'default' position is to do that same thing", whereas I said, I expect people to do that, I am not saying "they do XYZ". One statement is about the present the other about the future, or a future encounter 

Statement: I wanted to start a discussion, about this matter having a gray zone. There is cheating, like it was written about. there are opinions of people who might diverge, and there is the situation I hypothezised about. 

Narative: There are tons of sites, where you can send you promocodes of apps, that will write a review for you, totally legit. They write honest reviews. Imagine these sites would say the truth, always the truth? They would loose 50% of the people submitting their promocodes right away, because I would write about 50%bad reviews. (WARNING: I have not said 50% is bad, I said I would write 50% bad reviews,.), because otherwise I would think of myself not being honest, because to be frank if you find the most mediocre app, there must be 50% that are better and 50% that are worse. But if you look at honest reviews, the distribution is not like that, there are more good ones than bad ones.

Question: Is that tampering?

Answer: It is to be expected, because people tend to be nice (or should tend to be nice, aparently not everybody understands this concept).

Questions: How do you find comments that are favours or bought or planted by a company?

Question: How do you distinguish between 100 microsoft employees saying Windows 7 is the greates (because they are affraid of getting fired) from 100 Apple empoyees that say the same thing about MacOS 10.6 because they actually like it? WARNING: I don't say that it is the case! This is a figure of speach, a metaphor!

That was the idea of my first comment, and you turn this into a crusade against me! The world isn't good or bad, there are shades of gray, and it is very hard to distinguish between them.

Irony: Putting me in a corner, (for not doing anything, but talking about it) will most likely help to resolve and address the issues the original post was about! 

Cheers Arend

You can keep trying backpedal all you want. But what you said originally - and what you meant - was as clear as day. After I pointed this out to you, you realized what you'd said and how it sounded, and you went into damage control mode, using words like 'defamation' and 'pervert' to excuse yourself and deflect blame. And bringing the names of major companies into your attempts to deflect attention away from what you've admitted to doing, and getting all 'hypothetical' doesn't change what you gleefully said you did. Give it up. You weren't even caught. You admitted it. The more you talk and point, and act grandiose, the more ridiculous you seem.

@Arend Hintze

While you don't seem to realistically trying to scam the system by that it certainly can be seen that way by some. Yet honestly such a thing as you said is probably the most common. But if done by everyone truly can be seen as a dishonest review as well as publicly stating that isn't the best idea. Though you do word it as a "nice review" which I do think you are implying as not meaning cheat the system & make a 5 star review but an honest nice review about your product. That is probably just fine yet I can only guess a friend wouldn't be giving you a 1 star review. Though this has all gotten off track a little for I / WE are trying to point out that there is far too much dishonestly among App reviews & that as my discovery & the results prove... My action here has proven just how much tolerance Apple has for any & all such behavior. But other than that all I can say is if you put in hard work & make a quality product (app) word of mouth will spread & your app will be successful regardless.

Cheers Patrick Timney (@thescw)

Lots to say.

1. I do not want personal attacks on this site. Period. It is never justified. The purpose of these blogs is to exchange information and points of view.
2. I apologize that the ability to comment was temporarily shut off.
3. Whether it is Wikipedia, Amazon, or the App Store, or even this site, if you open up comments to public, you get great content and you can have serious problems. It is a trade-off.
4. As regard to the issue in question, I don't think the answer is black and white. In fact full disclosure. I sent an E-mail out to our bloggers that both Tari and Arend received. Here is exactly what I said:

iPhone Life Magazine App is in App Store!  The web version of the iPhone Life magazine app is at m.iphonelife.com. FThe app displays your blog posts dynamically as you post them.

Unfortunately, we found a bug in the App Store version not in Web app, so we will wait until it is fixed before publicizing the app (the free issue doesn’t display in Landscape.)  I’ll blog as soon as it is ready. However, in meantime, please download it and rate it:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iphone-life-magazine/id318348838?mt=8 or search on “iPhone Life magazine”.

Did I cross the line? You could argue it both ways. Who is to say? 

5. From a developer point of view I think the evaluation process is very unfair, especially for free apps. First off, most raitings come when a person deletes and app and are asked to rate it. IMHO many people try an app for 5 minutes, decide they don't like it, and give it a lousy rating. Our app is not pretty looking. However, it is quite functional. It is a window into our web site (blogs, magazine archives, best sites, app reviews from blogs and archives, and tips). The app is far from perfect, but I think it deserves a higher rating then it has gotten. The app gives access to LOTS of interesting and useful info about the iPhone.

6. Related, someone commented it would have taken him 10 minutes to develop our app. It took our developer 100's of hours to develop. This misinformation is painful to see in public.

You're right, Hal, it's not a black and white issue. What one person thinks is acceptable, another person may not. What one person sees as marketing, another person may not. No doubt Arend and I will not agree on this particular subject, but discourse is a good thing, even when it gets heated. That said, it was not my intention to make Arend feel as if his hard work - and it is hard work - developing applications for people to enjoy - should not be appreciated. There are better ways to disagree. As Hal said, it can 100s of hours to create one. It's not just the programming, but also the conceiving, the planning, the brainstorming, the testing, and yes, the marketing. If Arend would like to, I'll do an interview with him so that people can get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes of bringing an application to market.

Thanks a lot, Tari.

BTW --it is a little off-topic, but related. I want to say something about editorial and advertising in iPhone Life magazine. In a private E-mail, you told me that someone had just tweeted you that said that if we got a paid ad, we would write a positive review.

As owner of the company, I am the ONLY person in both advertising and editorial. Our magazine is strictly old school. Editorial and advertising is church and state. Rich Hall, our editor, doesn't know who will advertise. None of our volunteer bloggers and writers knows who advertises. This is the way we have run our business for 25 years.

 Hi,

I like Tari's idea about an interview  a lot. I might not be the typical iPhone developer, because I am not financially dependent on it, still it hurts to see what one can do with a good advertisement campaign, that I can't afford. The smaller you are the harder it is to compete against the "big ones". And if the big ones start to play unfair, it becomes impossible to compete.

I am looking forward to our interview,

Cheers Arend

I'm actually going to be interviewing a second developer as well, but from a very interesting perspective. That's been in the works for awhile and I'm very excited about it. We're just coordinating schedules. She has 2 applications out there, and they're quite successful in their category. They're quite unique in that they are in what is called a 'niche'. From what I understand, she doesn't have a huge advertising budget either and also developed both on a tight budget, but I've noticed at least one of her apps getting serious mainstream attention. From my research, I have a little bit of an idea how she accomplished that. Stay tuned as I'll also ask her about promotional strategies too.