Android
T-Mo wants better Android Market. Here are 5 Ways to make one.
March 18, 2009 | by Andrew Kameka
Google Android, T-Mobile
A T-Mobile executive says the 2,300-app-strong Android Market needs to diminish unwanted content. Though apps in the Android Market are ranked according to popularity and organized into categories, T-Mobile CTO Cole Broadman says, “Users have a hard time searching through that long tail.”
Broadman wants a way to filter-out uninteresting apps, and so do his customers. The Market is not nearly as chaotic or bloated as the iPhone App Store, but that’s because of youth. The App Store got crazy because too many apps perform similar functions or functions that no one really wants. Android’s continued growth could potentially produce similar problems, so it would be beneficial to improve the Market now.
That got me thinking: exactly what can be done to improve the Market?
1. Googlize the search function
Google is a company built on a great search. Android Market? Not so much. Searching for “Chomp SMS” yields no results, but “ChompSMS” (with no spaces) will locate the popular texting app. Google.com search is able to recognize the intention of misspelled words and the Market should be able to do it as well.
2. Add tag support
Categories work well for browsing apps but they can be a little broad at times. If I want a note-taking app beside the most popular AK Notepad, I can’t narrow browsing to just note-takers. I have to go to “Productivity” and filter through to do lists, calculators, and file managers. It would be great if users could browse or search for common tags within categories like “Notes” or “To Do Lists.” This works for blogs, so why not the Market?
3. Tweak popularity system, recommend similar apps
I don’t know what magical algorithm the Market uses to determine what’s most popular. Whatever it is, I hope it can be tweaked. A decent app can earn a bad reputation because users don’t understand the functions or trivial reasons about what they expect. Then there’s the case of highly-ranked apps like Caller ID Lite, which has only 2 and 1/2 stars, that are among the most popular because of a high number of downloads. It would be good to replicate the recommendation system that online retailers use. Amazon tells me people who buy a T-Mobile G1 also buy microSD cards. I wouldn’t mind ShopSavvy recommending a SnapTell download.
4. Create new category/browsing mode for “accessory” apps
We all love those apps within apps – themes, widgets, and complementary features that add on to a main app. There isn’t as much love for the way these apps crowd the market. Anyone who doesn’t use aHome doesn’t need to see the dozens of aHome themes available. It would make sense to create a separate category for these accessory apps to have their own space within the Market.
5. Combine “By Popularity” and “By Date” functions
The Market has displayed practically the same apps since I got my G1 last October. While this may be great for new Android users to find the best apps, I really don’t need to be reminded of the virtues of Weather Channel and MySpace Mobile every day. It would be good if there were a “Most Popular This Week” filter. That way I could see which recently uploaded apps are gaining traction in the Market.
Android’s greatest strength lies in the apps that users can add to their phone. I’d love to see these improvements eventually added to make finding those apps easier. Thankfully, T-Mobile recognizes the need to make the Android Market better. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait forever for them or anyone else to make that happen.
I agree with most everything you recomended. Im new to the Android community and I love all the apps out there. Like you said though, there are about 20 different Note Pad apps and its hard to guage which is the best, or compare them all because they are rated differently and all the Fart apps space them appart. The search is surprisingly not that good, considering its “powered by Google”. I’d like to see a better search, a better breakdown of the apps by Note Pad, Calcs, Card Games, Puzzle Games, etc.
Cheers to T-Mobile for for recognizing the clutter and asking for a cleaner, more organized shopping experience for their customers.
6. Roll Out paid Apps worldwide simultaniously. The market is not made by an incredible broke country.
7. Add “normal” possibilities for paying for apps. Stop pushing your own payment system.
Should also be able to hide apps you are not interested in.
Tagging would be abused immediately. I can imagine the top tags; “crap”, “fart”, “first”. Maybe if developers were allowed to tag applications and users were allowed to flag a tag as inappropriate.
But another feature that would enhance the AppStore would be a web interface. A robust web interface that allowed users to search, buy, review, subscribe, etc. to applications. A “my.android.com” -esque site would not only be beneficial to the AppStore, but Android as a whole. For the AppStore portion, developers could own pages dedicated to their applications; where they’d be able to create help pages, respond to comments, link to relevant content (reviews, videos, etc.).
6) Higing unwanted apps : be able to hide applications that you find uninteresting. You train the market by doing this time over time, and time over time the market will autofilter similar apps for you as well.
More quality apps : maybe it’s time for another mega contest to be launched to motivate talentuous developers to release great apps. Or, take the example of SFR in France, as they introduce the G1 they launch a developper contest at the same time, with 50K€ at the end of the line if I’m not mistaken.
7) Selected applications : would required a team of professional reviewers, who will give more or less visibility to an app in the market depending on whether this is “serious” or just garbage. I think iTunes Store works that way. This team could also apply a “silly” logo on apps that are really, really useless.
Ken – Tagging could be abused, but it could still be flagged and be better than nothing. Even if Google limited tags to certain categories so a Media app couldn’t take itself “shooter” to take advantage of people looking for games.
Fred – I’d love to see another round of challenges, even though the financial climate may make Google less likely to invest so much money into something it doesn’t directly profit from. But, there’s also the user-driven approach like what AndroidandMe did with the TorrentDroid bounty.
Totally agree with Ken – the Market need s a legit home on the web with Dev pages, better searching, RSS feeds the whole works. Since you would sign in with your google account you should be able to purchase apps from the website too!
#27: Ability for developers to add a “per version” changelog.
If I see a updated app in the “my downloads” section, it would be interesting what has changed between my and the latest version, so I can decide if I want to upgrade (some developers use the description for this, but that’s not the right position)
#28: Don’t allow developers to change a unprotected app to one that expires without rerelease (or at least make it noticable through market)
Scenario: Installed free app functions well on phone, developer decides to take money for the app after a while. In order to force the users with the free version to update to the paid version he releases a tiny “update” that only adds a expire date to the app.
Uh, and how about being able to sort by price and license? What if I want GPL only apps, or apache license apps. There is no good way to even know what the license is on most apps.
Why are we posting these great ideas here? Google needs to hear our voices and either hire a developer team, or we just need to skip the middle man and get a developer team to make another market app. It would be a crap-ton of work but I would without a doubt get it if they make it!