Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Side-effect of the iOS in-app purchase model - the reviews are worthless

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, so I'll get it on the record here.

Prior to the introduction of in-app purchases there was a difference between reviews of "free" (ad-supported) apps and honest apps. Reviews of free apps were worthless; a mix of fly-by reviews and scan reviews paid for by app revenue. Reviews of honest, pay for what you get, apps were useful. It was relatively costly to pay for a large number of favorable reviews.

With in-app purchasing freemium model apps though, the reviews ad-supported app quality - worth nothing.

1 comment:

Martin said...

I rarely read a usable review of an iOS app, no matter whether paid or not. One important reason is that I buy apps via the Swiss version of the iTunes store. There are not as many reviews as in the American store and the reviews available are written in several languages. I could use the American store, however, I had to continue using the Swiss store as well for updates, and using two version of the iTunes Store doesn't appear to be wise.

In a not shell: Reviews have gotten worse but they have never then that useful.

BTW: Commenting here drives me crazy. Google error messages regarding cookies, CAPTCHAs and so on.