Copycat, the way to the Appstore
So it's officially 100,000 apps in the Apple AppStore. Apple was happy to announce that and I'm sure developers don't share the same feeling. To me, it just means there are 90,000 crappy apps that no one cares about.
Having started a company trying to thrive on the success and genius of the iPhone for 5 months now, I still say that the Appstore to be a giant blackhole. Many have came up with theories and thesis on how to climb your way to the top but I feel no one has come up with that secret recipe yet. Today, I took a routine check on the top 25 apps. Sitting at #2 was Pocket Devil, a game that was branded as a copy cat of the very successful Pocket God. It has 2.5 stars for reviews and people are giving bad reviews telling others to not buy it. Despite that, it's still climbing up the top 25 list and now at the #2 position. That really got me thinking. Why? I have always thought that getting good reviews is essential if you want your app to at least have the chance of getting into the top 100s. But here's Pocket Devil with tons of bad reviews and it looks like they're on the way to the top spot. Apparently the copycat wins big. To date there's numerous flight control copycats and harbor master was one of the successful ones. It never did get into the top 25 but was among top 25 for games at a point. So with all that said, what am I actually trying to say here? With all that noise in the AppStore, it no longer matters how well your game or applicaion is. All it matters is getting your name out so everyone knows about. Good press, bad press, it's gonna help getting people to know about your app.
2 comments
Nov 04, 2009
Xo7Brainiac said...
Did you ever thought about paid installations could be the Magic behind this strange behavior?
Nov 04, 2009
Khang Toh said...
You mean Tapjoy's paid installations? I did thought that could be part of the reasons why these "type" of apps get to that level but I still think it's very marginal that paid installations could attribute to their climb.
