[HN Gopher] List of apps people pay for but have low rating
___________________________________________________________________
List of apps people pay for but have low rating
Author : visox
Score : 378 points
Date : 2021-05-01 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ideasfilter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ideasfilter.com)
| groaner wrote:
| Pretty much every dating app would be on this list if in-app
| purchases were taken into account.
| visox wrote:
| i am actually collecting this info, but not using so far
| visox wrote:
| So a while ago a i remembered one post from HN, it was some guy
| crawling google play store and keeping apps that were paid and
| people used them but had a low rating. He was selling this list,
| not sure if it was successful but i made something similar and
| updated
|
| So far checking only 3 marketplaces, my crawlers found so far
| about 100k apps, the default filters show only the more
| interesting once (paid and low rating)
|
| Its free.
|
| I will add more and more marketplaces eventually. I will also try
| to add some social features, like "working as a team on some
| idea" and posting own ideas, but will see how it goes.
|
| Feedback welcome
|
| EDIT: i just see it on mobile, it does not look ideal. Will need
| to work on that hm.
|
| EDIT2: just added pagination :), hope it works for you.
| akudha wrote:
| Do you know if scraping this data violates their ToS?
| chuckgreenman wrote:
| Even if it is, it doesn't matter. The US Court of Appeals
| created precedent that allows for the scraping and
| aggregation of publicly published information with that
| LinkedIn case.
| geuis wrote:
| Got a link for this? Could open up some possibilities.
| chuckgreenman wrote:
| Here's the actual case:
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
| courts/ca9/17...
|
| There is an attached PDF with the full decision, Pages
| 27, 28 on reference some related cases that informed the
| decision.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Dunno about Atlassian and Shopify, but I can't imagine Google
| launching a case against someone for scraping them.
|
| I guess robots.txt is all that really matters.
|
| Here's Play Store's: https://play.google.com/robots.txt
| minnehaha wrote:
| agreed, provided the crawler complies with robots.txt
| akudha wrote:
| This data is quite valuable and services like this aren't
| competing with these app stores. If anything, they are
| probably inviting more competition to the app stores
| resulting in better apps.
|
| There is no reason for these companies to go after some
| small guy scraping the app store data. But who knows -
| Craigslist went after one man shops. These companies might
| too.
| visox wrote:
| hm not sure how/if they will react if this blows up but it
| wont stop me for now.
| davidgh wrote:
| In the US, there was a ruling a couple of years ago that
| gives some legal clarity to scraping data made publicly
| available (in favor of the scrapers) in the hiQ vs. LinkedIn
| case. You can read more about it here
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-
| v-l...
| bahmboo wrote:
| Google's entire business is scraping websites
| catillac wrote:
| Maybe that's a reason to not feel bad if it violates the
| TOS but there are real consequences to doing so so perhaps
| your response isn't that helpful.
| AznHisoka wrote:
| If anyone really wanted to stop you, they would put up an
| anti scraping mechanism like Imperva and not even bother
| with legal action.
| reader_mode wrote:
| >but there are real consequences to doing so
|
| What consequences ? Breaking ToS can get your account
| suspended if you even need an account for doing this, not
| sure what else breaking the TOS really implies.
|
| I don't know if Google can claim ownership of this data
| as it's customer generated and publically available.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Shouldn't that be caught by anti-trust laws? Google does
| not pay websites for scraping, so anyone should be
| entitled to scrap Google to their hearts content.
| namdnay wrote:
| Websites can choose whether to be scraped or not, and
| google respects that choice
| hire_charts wrote:
| It's nice of google to respect the choice to effectively
| become undiscoverable to anyone searching for your
| product.
| ben_w wrote:
| You sound like you have a third opinion, one which would
| allow a website to appear on Google in response to user
| searches without Google knowing anything about what the
| website contains?
| k4rli wrote:
| To be fair if being scraped were opt-in (Robots Inclusion
| Standard?) instead of opt-out, we might have a completely
| different technological world. Who knows.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| By creating an account and using their webmaster tools
| giving up even more of your data?
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| No you just have to put a noindex header on requests to
| your website
| intricatedetail wrote:
| So they still can use up my resources?
| Google234 wrote:
| How can they know without looking? Again, you could also
| use the webmasters tools to block it...
| uglygoblin wrote:
| Robots.txt can accomplish the same thing which means they
| periodically grab a single text file from you.
| fooey wrote:
| Sure, but they don't scrape anyone who opts out
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps also keep a list of people who are currently
| implementing improved versions of these apps, to minimize the
| possibility of redundant work.
| visox wrote:
| yeap this is a social feature i will work on, actually
| thinking more about collaboration rather than competition but
| will see.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > He was selling this list
|
| Can someone explain the value of such a list, am I missing
| something? Don't get me wrong, your project is neat and I
| enjoyed looking through it, but I don't understand how anyone
| would try to sell this or pay money for this.
| bricemo wrote:
| The strategy is to take one of these apps and build a better
| version of it. The market demand is there, validated through
| purchases. But the market is unsatisfied with the current
| solution. So if you can build a better solution then you have
| a well defined valuable product
| nemomarx wrote:
| I guess it could be "here are apps that people need enough to
| pay for, but have complaints about" in order to develop
| alternatives?
|
| Maybe these are apps with bad user interfaces or some other
| issue and it's a list of low hanging fruit ideas?
| jamestimmins wrote:
| As an app developer, I spend a lot of time trying to find the
| right opportunities for apps to build. I'd happily spend $50
| to cut down research time by a few hours.
| visox wrote:
| well not sure if there is money in it, like said i cant tell
| if that guy with that list managed to sell anything :D
|
| I dont think i will put on a pay wall, i will rather try to
| build a community.
| moksly wrote:
| The default assumption for many people will be that something
| which sells, but has a low rating, is a business opportunity.
|
| The real business opportunity is the sale of the list of
| course. It's sort of like selling shovels to and booze to
| gold diggers.
| visox wrote:
| ha, hope you are not correct because i wont sell my list :)
| pegas1 wrote:
| Learn marketing from these guys who can sell mediocre
| product.
|
| Also, some might sell because their App resembles something
| popular so some users buy by mistake. Then make sure, it does
| not parasitise on your app!
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| Cool idea. I'm not able to find some well-used apps with the
| search, like Headspace. So as we say, it's about the execution.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Headspace is there, but you need to set the filter to 0usd
| min (the app is free) and max rating to 100 (the app is rated
| 92%)
| visox wrote:
| hmm shame, maybe remove some filters, maybe there are no
| hated apps like that.
| visox wrote:
| I just tried to add G2 to my list but they immediately get you
| on captcha, so they really dont wish to be crawled :D
| shoto_io wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this! Great idea!
|
| Q: How do you evaluate if the apps are still being paid for?
| visox wrote:
| good question, i cant tell how many people did actually pay
| and when was the last time someone did. I guess its up to you
| to do the research further. One can at least often see when
| the last comment was posted.
| visox wrote:
| Just added my page to product hunt, i think it may be a good way
| to propagate updates on the product since i am so far not
| collecting emails from you or anything.
|
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/ideas-filter
|
| The link to PH is also on http://ideasfilter.com/ top right
| reader_mode wrote:
| Good luck tring to do a better job replacing these on Android
| where every device x android version permutation out there =
| something breaks for a different user.
|
| Like the "Automatic Call Recorder Pro" (highest number of ratings
| on the list) has "try the free version first to see if this will
| work on your phone" ... I feel sorry for Android developers. As
| much as I dislike the "Apple way" of designing products (walled
| gardens and super opinionated instead of open and providing
| choices), every time I need to develop something for Android I'm
| flabergasted at how shit the platform is under the hood. Soo many
| APIs to do the same thing, depricated system APIs all over the
| place, but the only way to do things on devices X, but only from
| manufacturer Y, on Z the API functionality isn't even supported,
| on W you need to use newer APIs, on Q you need to use a custom
| solution - nobody really uses Q but your client got 3 complaints
| and can't determine priorities (understandable given the
| ecosystem fragmentation)
| tjoff wrote:
| Very bad example. You are not supposed to be able to record
| calls. Some drivers are working against you and depending on
| the audio path you might not have access to it. So some use
| workarounds such as pretending to be a bluetooth device just to
| get access to the audio.
|
| Now you might have a different opinion, that call recording is
| a basic feature that all phones should have. And I would agree.
| But if you have any such opinions then IOS is dead on arrival
| anyway.
| gsich wrote:
| Also the reason why there are no SIP gateways for Android.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Most of those buggy features are centered around things that
| shouldn't be possible anyway. On iOS, these apps would probably
| not even be available.
|
| Call recording used to be easy to implement, until Google took
| a look at the obvious security problem with apps recording
| calls from the background, and restricted the normal APIs to
| system software only. If an app has automatic call recording
| that works well, the manufacturer probably put an insecure OS
| on the phone, because then any app or game you download
| probably has that capability.
|
| The supported APIs all have excellent backwards compatibility
| through AndroidX. You can still many if not most modern APIs
| all the way back to Android 5 without much change in the code.
| Most system APIs are backported through Google's libraries, and
| for many others the standard compat library has shims that
| avoid most version checks. This is sort of the opposite of iOS,
| where most users are updated within a few months so many years
| of backwards compatibility isn't a big priority.
|
| Cheap, slow, crappy devices and background task killers are
| much more of a problem than the problems plaguing a lot of the
| APIs.
| reader_mode wrote:
| >Most system APIs are backported through Google's libraries,
| and for many others the standard compat library has shims
| that avoid most version checks.
|
| Just 6 months ago I took a small side project to port a web
| app to mobile and add some native functionality. I need to
| connect the user to a WiFi hotspot (industrial device
| controller) from code - the new APIs were absolutly not
| backwards compatible, the old APIs were just killed in Q,
| even worse the capabilites present in the old APIs
| (controlling WiFi networks) half wroked on older devices,
| depending on vendor (eg. not working on Samsung, working on a
| Pixel, etc.)
|
| iOS didn't expose the level of controll straight up and I was
| able to explain to client that that's just not possible. We
| saw Android was all over the place in this regard, but
| because a competitor had a halfassed version that only worked
| on some devices the client insisted it was possible to
| implement this on Android. It took us a week to figure out
| that the whole thing is an unmanageable mess and demo to the
| client that the competitor is broken in so many scenarios and
| that we should just use the system UI like we do on the iOS.
|
| >On iOS, these apps would probably not even be available.
|
| See but I prefer this to Android "it's possible because we
| were wrong, now we leave it out there but you can't do it
| going forward". Why not just blacklist it in app store and
| prevent new apps from using it on review ? Also it's obvious
| they don't have any sort of certification testing for these
| APIs because they just straight out don't work on various
| vendors - they could easily mandate that to qualify for
| Google services on your device you need to implement system
| APIs and pass the test suite to solve these inconsistencies.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with this entire mess is that there are things
| some trustworthy third party software _needs_ to do, but
| are open to abuse by untrustworthy software using them for
| nefarious purposes.
|
| In theory the answer to this is for the app reviewers to
| scrutinize any app using those capabilities to make sure
| it's not abusing them, but in practice the app approval
| process is actually kind of crap and doesn't do a good job
| of making those distinctions.
|
| Your remaining alternatives are to prohibit that thing from
| happening whatsoever, which pisses people off, or to make
| it possible but a huge miserable ordeal, which pisses
| people off.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > If an app has automatic call recording that works well, the
| manufacturer probably put an insecure OS on the phone,
| because then any app or game you download probably has that
| capability.
|
| I think that's a simplistic way to think of it, and assumes
| that there are only "apps" with exactly one privilege level.
| There are a multitude of things the OS could do to give a
| good user experience AND stay secure from random apps
| recording you.
|
| Off the top of my head, how about: Apps can record you, but
| only by registering a special chunk of code that will be run
| with a special "tempfile" privilege, where the app doesn't
| know where the file is stored to. Then, once the call is
| over, if the app tries to access that file again, with normal
| privileges, the OS puts up a confirmation screen that says
| "Good news! App <Dave's Cool Pachinko Parlor> has recorded
| your last call. Do you want to keep or delete that
| recording?"
| nitrogen wrote:
| The screen could/should also display a prominent recording
| indicator, with the name of the app, while recording.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't understand why call recording isn't a built-in
| features to all of the phone apps. I know the standard
| explanation is that it isn't legal in all locales, but there
| are plenty of illegal things you can do with your phone.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a wide variety of bad behavior people can engage
| in, from breaking two party consent to making the phone a
| listening device.
|
| End of the day, 90% of phone recording use cases are bad
| ideas, and making it moderately more difficult to do avoids
| alot of trouble.
| callesgg wrote:
| Where do you get that number from?
|
| I once got a call from a person threatening my life. I
| find it hard to justify not being able to record such a
| thing because of some strange hypothetical scenario about
| bad actors recording calls.
|
| To be honest I can't think of any scenario where
| recording your own calls would be bad. Can you give me a
| example?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Notification of the parties is key. You always have a
| good reason to record a phone call.
|
| But, have you ever had a conversation on the phone that
| was difficult, not your best, or otherwise problematic?
| Have you ever said something that you would only say to
| one person?
|
| The lower the barrier, the worse people's behavior will
| manifest.
| p_l wrote:
| There's also the part where it simply wasn't possible on
| many older SoCs to record calls[1]. Back then, there were
| apps that recorded calls using undocumented APIs available
| only on Qualcomm SoCs, and no one else had any call
| recording. Combined with legal problems around call
| recording, I guess nobody cared.
|
| [1] My first android phone would get physically
| disconnected from microphone input by the modem during a
| call
| Forge36 wrote:
| Call recording is only legal with single party consent in 2
| states. Google voice allows recording incoming calls, but
| not outgoing.
|
| 1) Low demand 2) High impact of getting it wrong (untested
| legal consequences?) 3) lack of a good story. IE: why can't
| you track what was said in another method? Ie: paper note
| Sebguer wrote:
| > Call recording is only legal with single party consent
| in 2 states.
|
| What? Federally call recording is legal with single party
| consent. 35 states and DC have single party consent.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Call recording is only legal with single party consent
| in 2 states.
|
| Call recording is legal even in 2 party consent states...
| with consent. Also often legal if it's to protect against
| a major criminal threat.
|
| > IE: why can't you track what was said in another
| method? Ie: paper note
|
| Try convicting your attacker with that.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I remember that Trump tape where the governor taped, and
| released, the conversation to the public. Something like,
| "I need you to find 1300 votes in my favor."
|
| It turns out that Georgia is one of those states. You can
| tape a person without their consent, and broadcast it?
| hrktb wrote:
| To me it's worse than that, as service providers will
| record calls and use these recording only at their benefit.
|
| In these situations where recording is agreed by both
| parties, getting restricted on the individual side is
| frustrating.
|
| Basically it's the proverbial technical solution to a
| social problem.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Online meeting software pretty elegantly addresses the
| need for recording and avoids many of the gotchas.
| krick wrote:
| Exactly. And call recording app is pretty much like any
| other voice recording app, so it's not like the
| manufacturer is liable. And it's surely not their fucking
| business what I do with my phone.
|
| Anyway, I used to rely on the call recording quite heavily,
| and I was really pissed off, when I discovered that it
| doesn't work anymore, so all my recent calls are lost. This
| was really awkward, because knowing my calls are recorded I
| stopped writing down appointments or ask to repeat
| something I didn't hear well, because I can just replay.
|
| Without all that stuff there's really not much point using
| phone at all. Except most messengers and services require
| you having a phone number, which is absolutely ridiculous.
| imgabe wrote:
| If the legal issue were a concern, all the app would have
| to do is announce that a recording is being made as soon as
| it's turned on.
|
| That might make it less useful for people in one-party
| states who want to record secretly, but it would be better
| than nothing.
| gsich wrote:
| I also think you can workaround this by setting to speaker,
| then use your voice note app.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| This is a great resource and surprising to see it be free!
|
| The trick is to of course read a few of the ratings to get behind
| the rating number. I also filtered for 1000+ ratings as who'd
| want to develop an app based on research for a app no one is
| using.
|
| A theme I saw in my 5 minutes of usage were apps that were once
| loved and popular but have been poorly maintained through the
| android updates. I get that for small app devs - I had an app and
| I got so many "ya gotta do this" emails from Google I just
| abandoned it. It was a free app so didn't feel so bad.
| visox wrote:
| > This is a great resource and surprising to see it be free!
|
| i think i rather build a community around if i can and find
| some other way to monetise this, but will see.
|
| I think the pattern will be different for different platforms
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a pretty cool idea!
|
| I've tended to write free software, designed to meet needs (as
| opposed to make money), but this is a good idea, and one that I
| think could be useful to folks that need to come up with "that
| big idea."
| visox wrote:
| thank you :)
| welder wrote:
| Could this also be a list of apps having users with unrealistic
| expectations, don't know what they want, or don't know what's
| technologically feasible?
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Theres a lot of issues with abandonment. Do people expect to pay
| $1-$6 for lifetime support of an app, otherwise its 1 star? Or
| should the developers have warned that the product is EOL'd,
| without refunding money to previous buyers.
| orf wrote:
| No TLS, results come from
| "http://192.95.30.65:9002/api/business/search".
|
| Weird.
| visox wrote:
| yes this is the place where my backend lives and exposes the
| rest api.
|
| The is no domain alias for that address so far.
| iagovar wrote:
| A glance at some apps looks like soe low valuation is simply
| because changes in the android API and such.
| cleorama wrote:
| This seems like a good idea OP.
|
| In case someone's looking for a UX/UI person to tackle one of the
| listed problems with, feel free to message me at
| dvsmehlik@gmail.com. A somewhat current 'About Me' page can be
| found here: https://www.notion.so/David-
| Smehlik-1b4db0e80f3c4f21912e86f2....
|
| (P.S. Please remove the comment if this is not allowed here.)
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| This reminded me of a post I read somehwere on the web of a guy
| who was looking to make some money early on when the App store
| was a thing and basically poked around on it trying to do the
| same thing your list suggests -- find an app that has enough
| downloads and a decent paid userbase but which seems kinda
| terrible.
|
| Turns out he noticed there was a really popular app for... the
| bible, but he noticed it was pretty shitty. IIRC, he then made
| his own without too much effort, published in the app store, and
| made a decent chunk of change off of it for quite a while.
| visox wrote:
| ANOTHER UPDATE, i just added a popup on hover so one can see the
| app description (at least what i crawled) and the app image/icon.
| Hope you like it.
|
| I also tried to add G2 as an another app market place but boy
| they really dont wish to be crawled so i need to pass on them.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| This is good, but IMO you should also add the number of downloads
| because most of these apps seem to be very niche and likely have
| very few downloads.
| pknerd wrote:
| Can you provide it in downloadable/CSV format for each keyword
| search/filter?
|
| It'd be very helpful!
|
| Good job by the way!
| visox wrote:
| hmm good idea, i do see some problems and improvements that i
| need to do before i can implement this kind of feature but yes,
| sure.
|
| and thx, peoples interest and praise is quite motivating
| InvOfSmallC wrote:
| If I could suggest a feature, I would put number of downloads to
| see what is the market for that problem.
|
| Cool job though!
| visox wrote:
| yeah number of ratings is i guess just one side of the coin.
|
| I can add it but some other improvements come first.
| cercatrova wrote:
| You should add a lowest ratings count as that determines both
| the rating as well as the number of people who bought and
| rated it low, showing the biggest opportunities from this
| list.
|
| Or better yet, rather than more in the dropdown, just have
| two separate filters, one is rating and rating count, the
| other is ascending/descending sort.
| [deleted]
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| Price is a really poor metric. Would be more interesting to look
| for high volume of sales / low rating
| throw_839189 wrote:
| It seems there's no pagination. It shows total 220, but displays
| only 50. Otherwise cool idea, thanks!
| visox wrote:
| Just added pagination :D !
| visox wrote:
| yeah pagination is coming soon.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Do ratings actually matter? The only time I look at them is when
| it's an Indie game and I want to see people's impressions of it.
| Even still, I'll go on Reddit and find the reviews there.
|
| I say this because I have seen excellent but popular apps have
| very low ratings just because they are popular. Also, when
| someone gives it a low rating because of a bug that's fixed 2
| days later, is there a mechanism to take that into account?
| vuciv1 wrote:
| I have a mobile app, on Google Play I have a 3.6 rating, and on
| ios I have a 4.6 rating.
|
| I haven't seen a difference yet, but I read for app store
| optimization purposes, higher ratings help.
|
| Makes sense.
| mrtksn wrote:
| If the app is not a scam, low ratings often mean the users
| failed to find a way to report an issue or get help. They care
| enough for your app to go through trouble of finding their way
| back to the store page, find the feedback form there and write
| an angry letter.
|
| If you don't receive much written reviews but only low star
| ratings, it probably means that your app is asking the wrong
| users for a review or asking at a bad time.
|
| Popular non-scam apps with low ratings probably simply fail at
| the feedback collection and communication with their users.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I play some games that have low ratings. The quality of
| the games is great but...
|
| The issue seems to be (based on the negative reviews) that
| people don't understand the game. They assume it is like
| popular game X, but they're playing a different game.
|
| The tutorial explains that the game has a view distance and fog
| of war.....but the top reviews are negative posts about
| opponents in the distance "disappearing"....
| airstrike wrote:
| Case in point, Civilization VI currently has a 3.3 rating on
| the App Store which is criminally low
| gpm wrote:
| Civilization VI is, in my experience, buggy to the point of
| being almost unplayable (in multiplayer, which is all I care
| about). I'm not sure 3.3 is criminally low, it probably just
| reflects the fact that reliability is a very important
| feature.
| duxup wrote:
| Is that AI opponent still completely incapable of making
| decisions / rage quits?
|
| Like if the AI isn't even playing.. that sucks.
| geraltofrivia wrote:
| To be honest, I don't much like Civ VI on my iPad. Its not a
| matter of performance but the interface, as well as the game
| is just conducive to be played with a touchscreen. My opinion
| of course is biased since I play a lot of Civ (1000+ hours on
| Steam) on my PC, but not at all on the iPad.
|
| I also imagine that most people who'd buy civ on the app
| store are like me: looking for a more convenient way to play
| the game, already used to it on PC, and find the ipad
| offering quite dissatisfying.
| airstrike wrote:
| It's a full fledged game with great graphics and tons of
| DLC... of course it's not the same as the PC experience,
| but it's meant to work even on an iPhone, which makes it
| quite the achievement IMHO
| BigBalli wrote:
| they matter because they tell you how to make the app better.
| karlkloss wrote:
| There are a lot of very good apps out there that have low
| ratings. But when you actually read the ratings, you realize that
| the users are just too dumb to read.
|
| There are users that complain that the app doesn't work, although
| the description clearly says that it works only on certain
| devices or with certain external hardware, that those idiots
| DON'T have. There are others that don't understand at all what
| the app ist supposed to do, so their comments are actually
| embarrassing themselves.
|
| It pisses me off that the app developers aren't able to remove
| ratings from people that are obviously idiots.
| [deleted]
| azeirah wrote:
| Have some respect, please.
|
| Idiot or a frustrated 70 year old coming into contact with a
| smartphone for the first time?
|
| Idiot, or a person with ADHD who has trouble focusing on the
| instructions and just wants to use the app intuitively?
|
| Idiot, or person whose first language isn't English?
|
| Idiot, or person with an IQ of 85. Yes, you might call someone
| like that an "idiot", but that's first of all nasty to say, and
| is that justified if they're part of your target audience? You
| have to design for these people.
|
| Idiot, or person who's completely stressed the fuck out who
| just wants to use your app for what it's meant for and not
| spend a single second more?
|
| Idiot, or drunk person who wants to order food/have fun/order
| stuff online because it is incredibly important to order that
| right now?
|
| Idiot, or someone who just isn't very interested in techonology
| whatsoever and just uses a phone to keep up-to-date with
| friends and does some banking? You'd be surprised at how many
| people don't know what a zip file is, who don't know what USB
| is, who don't know if a GB is larger than a KB or not?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I would love to upvote your comment twice, so I'm replying
| instead.
|
| Amen to all this. People need to stop being elitists, and
| assuming that other people love and care about technology as
| much as them, or even that everyone is always capable (as you
| mentioned, low IQ or mental health can be a real problem for
| some users).
|
| I recently saw a comment on other thread: What people need to
| understand about good design: If you need to explain to
| people how to use your product the "right" way, it's probably
| a badly designed product.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| "Idiot" is needlessly offensive and the GP's tone isn't
| great, but all of those reasons are usually invalid reviews
| (unless the app markets to that demographic). If I'm reading
| reviews for an app seeing your review about misreading the
| description because english isn't your first language is
| unhelpful spam (assuming the app is english-only).
|
| Unfortunately, these type of reviews where people post
| completely irrelevant complaints are quite common (see the
| number of people reviewing their local post office in Amazon
| reviews), but I do wish platforms would remove them.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'd say a lot of those are perfectly valid reasons to give
| a bad review, as those are all actual human beings with
| mobile phones who may find and buy an app on the app store.
|
| It reminds me of when I did tech support in college.
| Everybody who walked in or called was a real person trying
| to get real things done. If they knew as much about
| computers as me, they wouldn't have been walking in. So I
| learned to accept them as they were and do my best to help
| them. I didn't get to choose who walked in.
|
| I think it's the same deal with putting an app in an app
| store. Well over 80% of America has a smartphone at this
| point. If a dev really wants to restrict their market to
| some narrow demographic, it's on them to do the work of
| countering the context, which sets the entry criteria
| somewhere around "has at least one eye and one finger".
| That means very clear marketing, design, and interface
| choices to make it clear to people they're in the wrong
| place before they've invested enough time that they feel
| writing a review is merited.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I have the same issue with reviews like that. If an app
| isn't meant for you, uninstall it, get a refund, and move
| on. A review that basically says "I didn't have product X
| so this app that controls product X is garbage" are
| completely useless (except if the app says nowhere in the
| title or or description that it has additional requirements
| to function).
|
| They don't bother me as much as the Amazon ones you bring
| up though. I swear the majority of negative reviews I see
| on there are people complaining that the product never
| shipped or that the shipping service damaged it. There's so
| many of them that on Amazon that it can be nearly
| impossible to find reviews that actually say negatives
| about the product. Tends to end up being better to find a
| trusted professional reviewer and if they haven't reviewed
| what you're looking at, just skip it in favor of something
| they have reviewed.
| akudha wrote:
| A counter example:
|
| There are lots of bad reviews on Amazon, because of shipping.
| People leave one star reviews _only_ (I know because they say
| so, in the review) because their stuff came a day later than
| they expected. How is the product creator responsible for
| shipping delays by the carrier or by the Amazon warehouse?
|
| The reality is that online shoppers are impatient, have
| unrealistic expectations and do not read the product
| description. Not all, but enough to be a concern and enough
| to affect a product's ratings. There are lots of bad products
| on Amazon. But there are also lots of bad behavior from
| shoppers too. I don't know if this is true with other online
| stores, but with Amazon I have seen this often
| pvg wrote:
| Those, at least, are reportable and Amazon removes them.
| Interestingly, they'll also remove reviews that say
| positive things about shipping, if that's most of the
| review.
| believeinskills wrote:
| Yeah that last one is indeed an idiot. Also, side note, why
| do people think that deserve respect? Very curious of this
| point of view.
| alexalx wrote:
| If someone decides to spend time writing a one star review
| before reading app description till the end he is an idiot
| with personal issues.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes all of these might happen, but you would be also pissed
| if you were in a rush and someone in front of you in, let's
| say, McD or Subway didn't know what or how to order. (Or you
| were their server)
|
| Yes, UX is important, yes be patient with people who might
| not get it at the first time, but I see situations like:
|
| - Your app is very specific and it shouldn't be used by
| people outside a certain domain field. Then some idiot
| downloads it and gives 1 star because he can't figure it out.
| This is the kind of person that calls traditional
| sphygmomanometers "dumb".
|
| - If you build a more idiot proof system the world comes up
| with a better idiot. I've seen reviews on Amazon complaining
| that a certain size of item was "small". Conveniently the
| review indicated the chosen size and guess which one was it
| between multiple sizes? (The smallest one of course)
| askonomm wrote:
| You're not a very nice person are you? In a world where you
| sell products to customers, customers are who you should design
| for. Customers are who you should listen to. If your customers
| are making it clear as day to you that your app is too complex
| to use, make it simpler. Maybe you make apps for power-users
| who are extremely witty and can decrypt any level of complexity
| with no issue, but most people (including me) can't.
| joshgoldman wrote:
| Stop defending tyranny
| romanhn wrote:
| > their comments are actually embarrassing themselves
|
| Your comment is one of those
| [deleted]
| nromiun wrote:
| What is the point of reviews if the dev can just remove it if
| they don't like it? That will quickly give every app a five
| star rating.
|
| And the reason users write "app doesn't work" instead of giving
| a complete description of the bug because app stores have a
| word limit on reviews. Even your rant here will cross the word
| limit of Google Play reviews.
|
| And it's not like every dev behaves like they are intelligent
| either, most devs have a reply bot that tells people with
| negative reviews to check their internet.
| ascorbic wrote:
| I had an app that was free, but was solely a client for a paid
| service. Despite putting this in capital latters at the top of
| the description, it still got loads of negative reviews saying
| that it was misleading and wasn't really free. It was
| exasperating as I was never pretending it was anything but
| that, but I consoled myself with the fact that the people who
| actually needed it would be coming from the site and were
| already paying users.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Part of creating something is describing it and communicating
| it to the right people.
|
| Absolute ratings don't matter as much as inter-industry ratings
| anyways.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is a way to filter for underserved markets. If your UI is
| trash and your description is unclear to "idiots," there's a
| market available for other people with the talent to do what
| you couldn't. Alternately, if people hate your app because they
| imagine that it's something that it isn't, that means that
| there's a demand for _that_ app available for someone willing
| to provide it.
| brokenkebab wrote:
| Well, we all can be idiots with various things. However, the
| problem you mention is real: ratings can be very skewed just
| because non-target audience may come and try something they
| don't need/understand. You can't solve it by just letting to
| delete ratings though - it's too easy to abuse.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >too dumb to read
|
| >idiots
|
| >embarrassing themselves
|
| >pisses me off
|
| >obviously idiots
|
| This attitude toward users - _regardless_ of whether your
| assessment that the source of the problem is intelligence is
| correct - is poisonous noise that creates far more problems
| than it solves. Also, the hostility reduces the quality of
| discourse.
| m00dy wrote:
| I didnt like his attitude neither
| brokenkebab wrote:
| I agree that self-restraint in expressing opinions can
| prevent unnecessary stirring of emotions, but your comment's
| tone contradicts to this noble idea: it stirs emotions by
| using meaninglessly overloaded words like "poisonous noise",
| and vague warnings ("creates far more problems than it
| solves") which being contextually undefined just sounds
| patronizing.
| thrower123 wrote:
| My general policy is to give a 1-star rating to any app that
| nags me and prevents me from using it until I dismiss a screen
| asking me for a review. Especially if I've already rated it.
| noodle wrote:
| This is interesting but I also wonder where the effect tapers
| off. I'm working on a startup in a particular space, and almost
| all competitors have high ratings on marketplaces but behind the
| scenes we know their churn is HUGE because people strongly
| dislike the products. Are some products just polarizing such that
| the highs and lows will be more willing to submit ratings while
| the displeased but unmotivated mids won't bother with a rating
| but will still churn?
| visox wrote:
| wish i could filter by Churn Rate, that would be a killer
| filter :)
| lwansbrough wrote:
| You can almost certainly get that information from somewhere,
| as virtually every app is sharing data with advertisers, or
| is directly showing ads which can track lifetime usage.
| rozab wrote:
| People don't leave a bad review because they realise they don't
| need or aren't very interested in an app. It's because they
| need or want to use the app but are prevented from doing so by
| bugs or other issues.
| tlogan wrote:
| > > bugs or other issues >
|
| Other issues == not free.
|
| I have some experience running apps with 1M or more users.
|
| In my experience, I see that 10% of bad reviews are due to
| bugs while 90% are because a user really needs the
| app/service, but it is not free.
|
| Which also means this: if the application is useless (and
| just steals your data), then it will have good reviews.
| avipars wrote:
| What's the idea? See that they built an MVP but have angry
| customers that want to switch over to your solution?
| monkwhocode wrote:
| https://www.monkwhocode.com/2021/05/coding-interview-questio...
| chevill wrote:
| Great idea, I'd just recommend letting people filter out games.
| moooshupork wrote:
| Play Store would have a useful search engine if Google
| implemented this, but hubris cripples advanced search across
| Google's properties. Their business is selling ads, and letting
| me find exactly what I want on my own instead of being served ads
| to _suggest stuff_ that interests me--but almost never does--
| would wrinkle the bottom line. Same logic for supermarkets. Why
| tell me where everything is when I 'll probably buy more if I
| wander around.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I'm curious, what problem does a list of apps with low ratings
| solve?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Paid apps with low ratings might be a way to identify an
| unserved market. (Willing to pay, not satisfied.)
| moooshupork wrote:
| The title suggests one possible use. It's a search interface
| with the number of parameters that can be changed*, so there
| are many possible uses. I used it to define the highest rated
| most expensive apps, because I like and will pay for good
| stuff, and I found several I didn't even know existed.
| axegon_ wrote:
| A few things to factor in: time spent in a supermarket is very
| different from time spent online. People are used to typing a
| query and the top 5 results that are yielded are the winners
| 90% of the time. Very few people will go beyond that. Which is
| why ads are crammed into that list. How often do you go to the
| second page of your web searches? Pareto 101 - either you're
| first or you're everything else and you get nothing if you are
| the latter. No matter how well you organize and present
| everything, the attention span of people online is absurdly
| low. I've fiddled with that concept at my old job and you lose
| clients at astonishing rates with every additional second you
| take away from their time, regardless of whether you give them
| an incentive to make it through to the end. I bet Google has
| come to the exact same conclusion over time. I remember they
| used to have a very advanced search engine features back in the
| late 2000's. These days those functionalities are still very
| much alive but you have to know them: +, - inuri, inurl,
| intitle, etc.
| moooshupork wrote:
| We start with complexity and simplify. We never get to simple
| if we don't try to wrangle chaos and complexity, so I
| disagree with the "It's been tried before and failed"
| defeatism. Pareto is one of my pet peeves because, no matter
| how you slice it, it can be used to argue against all
| advanced scenarios.
|
| 1. Just because it's failed in the past doesn't mean it's
| going to fail in the future.
|
| 2. Context is utmost.
|
| 3. We need to stop assuming that people are stupid and start
| believing the complexity is okay sometimes. I believe a
| tyranny of the majority is no more helpful in software than
| it is in democracy, so I don't buy into Pereto. That one
| belongs on the trash sheep along with UML, Agile, and other
| systems and theories of software development. IMO, of course.
| But there's a time and place for complexity. Audience
| matters. I think I'm preaching to the choir here.
| axegon_ wrote:
| I think you're misinterpreting my message. People aren't
| inherently stupid, but they are extremely susceptive to go
| down the shortest route without thinking twice (even if
| it's not the optimal in other regards: distance vs speed vs
| complexity). As I said, I've seen this at very large scale
| and there's a clear pattern. Make a survey with 3 questions
| with no reward and another one with some reward and hand
| them out to 20k people. You would get roughly 2000
| responses roughly 1000 for each group. Give them a fourth
| question without modifying any of the other values and the
| responses drop by half, regardless of whether you offer
| them a reward twice as big in return. The hours of mindless
| scrolling through social media appears as a one continuous
| event but if you think about it, the context switching
| takes place several times per scroll. This is what makes
| ads so effective. Amazon, Google play or any other
| marketplace is the same story(take a closer look at Amazon-
| it's just as crammed with ads). There are a few ways to
| monetize large user bases: sell them items, which despite
| effective, will only convert a tiny amount of your users
| into paying users, not to mention high paying users. Sure,
| it's a good tactic but all other users are just a water of
| traffic at the bare minimum(often storage, cpu time, hell,
| even electricity if you host everything on bare metal in
| your own data center). As a result, Internet meet ads. I
| mean there are other ways which are much uglier to monetize
| your users so I'd rather not go there. As I said, I'm
| absolutely sure a lot of very intelligent people have
| reached similar conclusions and that's precisely why the
| Google play store behaves the way it does. And I'm willing
| to bet they've tried other tactics as well.
| mongolianbeef wrote:
| Can you name popular stores that actually intentionally list
| the worst rated items? Amazon, iTunes, and supermarkets don't
| go around listing the worst vacuum cleaners/songs/bacon. You
| might be able to find out by scrolling to the bottom of product
| list sorted by "Best Rating", or by the amount of stock, but I
| think intentionally pointing out the items by "Worst Rating" is
| kind of outside the mission of stores...
| [deleted]
| herbst wrote:
| I love that you list Shopify apps. I was wondering about that
| exactly when i evaluated it for my business. A lot of the issues
| with the apps listed there are things that are simply not
| possible with shopify tho. Still interesting market IMO.
| visox wrote:
| thx i try also wordpress/wooCommerce eventually.
| tyingq wrote:
| Selling to e-commerce sellers is a particularly difficult set
| of customers though. They typically know just enough about
| technology to demand things that aren't possible. And often
| skewed towards a type-a attitude where being loud and obnoxious
| is their go-to. So, high-margin, but you'll earn your money in
| that space.
| lucaspanjaard wrote:
| Very smart. Reminds me of a meta service i used to scout products
| for my e-commerce business. Not sure how you'll be able to
| monetize it as it is relatively simple to copy but perhaps the
| first movers advantage is enough if you keep it free for
| visitors. Good luck in any case! I'm sure this will sprout new
| companies.
| visox wrote:
| Yeah i am not sure either, but its weird that noone had this
| idea before it seems obvious especially when there was that one
| guy who made the static list, perhaps he it didnt sell well and
| that was the end of it.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Interesting indeed, I wonder how one could extend this concept to
| web-based products such as SaaS. Probably not really, since there
| is no way to get the a rating for websites.
| visox wrote:
| hmmm interesting idea, perhaps i can crawl some websites where
| people rate all sort of solutions/SaaS. Not sure where i could
| get a list of SaaS tho, maybe product hunt.
| hobofan wrote:
| G2[0] or stackshare[1].
|
| It should be mentioned though that G2 reviews are usually
| pretty heavily positively manipulated via "Review for Amazon
| Gift card" schemes.
|
| [0]: https://www.g2.com/
|
| [1]: https://stackshare.io/
| visox wrote:
| ah nice nice thx a lot, it will find a way into my list :)
| gpas wrote:
| see also alternativeto.net
|
| https://alternativeto.net/platform/online/?feature=softwa
| re-...
|
| love your project
| dawnerd wrote:
| Recently tried out g2 and found way too much friction in
| comparing services. And most of the information was
| outright incorrect.
| throw_839189 wrote:
| Also Capterra[0] and Trustpilot[1] can be used to find
| ratings. May be more challenging to find pricing.
|
| UPDATE: It seems G2[2] has data about pricing.
|
| [0] capterra.com [1] trustpilot.com [2] g2.com
| akudha wrote:
| Are these sites really that useful? I checked a couple of
| products on stackshare that I have used. Shallow content.
| And got prompted immediately with a signup popup, just like
| Instagram does. According to similarweb, the site gets 1.4M
| pageviews per month. So I guess the demand is there, I just
| wish the information was better.
| hobofan wrote:
| I use them mainly for discovery, and do my own evaluation
| on the tools, as the crowdsourced reviews are mostly
| crap.
|
| Stackshare was great in the beginning, but as is the way
| with every site with crowdsourced reviews, business
| motives (incentivized/fake reviews) or personal motives
| (writing shallow reviews for "clout") took hold after 1-2
| years (around the same time the added the signup popup).
| akudha wrote:
| I tried a semi popular product, it wasn't even listed.
| And that giant login popup irritated the hell out of me.
| Why do they need me to login? Are they aggregating this
| data and selling it or something like that?
|
| Lets say we build a better version of stackshare. What
| would be the things you would look for, as a user (other
| than honest reviews)? It is near impossible to do a good
| job of comparing features, even having up-to-date pricing
| data is hard. So what else can be added to make it
| useful?
| hobofan wrote:
| I've actually spent some time working on a Stackshare
| derivate focused on Marketing SaaS product for a friend
| of mine (tough that never ended up launching). For a pure
| generic SaaS & OSS tools site like Stackshare is, I'm not
| sure if there is a good business model that doesn't
| compromise the product.
|
| A few possible improvements over Stackshare:
|
| - Honest & in-depth long-form reviews. Quality matters so
| much more than quantity. Even a single in-depth blog post
| every few weeks would provide more value than the
| crowdsourced ones you currently find on the site
|
| - Openly accessible, and no social/gameification features
| that nobody needs
|
| - Better categories and making it possible for a tool to
| be in multiple ones (and being able to see it). The
| structure of the current ones is a mess. E.g. CMake is in
| "Java Build Tools" but the "C/C++ build tools" category
| is basically empty with 2 tools.
|
| - Better searching/filtering. Kind of connected to the
| previous point. They have the data (don't know of which
| quality) of "Tool1 works with Tool2", so you could
| possibly have a more generic "Build tools" category and
| then filter by "works with Python".
|
| - I don't care much for automatic comparison features, as
| they often don't yield good results. E.g. Jira often
| looks good in such comparisions, but you'll still want to
| bang your head against a wall every time you have to wait
| for it to load one of it's pages. A good alternative
| would be a quick overview of key metrics and category-
| dependent badges, which you can use to form your own
| opinions. RubyToolbox[0] does a fairly good job of that.
|
| [0]: https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/pagination
| akudha wrote:
| Thank you for the detailed comment and for the ruby-
| toolbox link.
|
| All good ideas. Though keeping the reviews up-to-date
| might become a full time job in itself, as software
| changes often. I use a service called clickup, they add
| features constantly and quickly.
|
| How does ruby toolbox do the categories? All other data
| they show can be automated, but I wonder how they do
| categorization. They probably use the topics feature from
| github, I still think it is hard to automate it fully.
|
| Edit: Ah, never mind. Found this
| https://github.com/rubytoolbox/catalog
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