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Apple continues to crackdown on recommendation apps
Apple's crackdown on apps that violate the new recently debuted 2.25 clause of the App Store Guidelines has expanded according to a report by PocketGamer. The rule states that no app can copy functionality from the App Store to promote purchases for apps other than their own. Clause 2.25 lead to the death, and subsequent redesign, of AppShopper into it's current social media focus. AppGratis has not been so lucky. However, as a developer rejection sent to PocketGamer explains, more apps may soon be on the chopping block. The rejection supplied to PocketGamer specifically cited apps that "include filtering, bookmarking, searching or sharing recommendations" as verboten for not being different enough from the App Store itself. None of those four provisions are officially listed in clause 2.25. This extension of the app store guidelines further closes users off from apps that supply recommendations outside of the ones found in Apple's own store. Given the controversy surrounding what some consider AppGratis' gaming of the system for profit, Apple's move could be a matter of shoring up its own rankings and keeping possible manipulation off of the charts. However the developer of the app in question told PocketGamer their app is just for sharing recommendations with friends. Therein lays the problem. According to the developer: "Our app is primarily focused on sharing recommendations to your friends. I have not seen this rejection notice before and believe that it is a new one. We thought that basing our recommendations on sharing was suitable for Apple, as it had previously stated that if you bake in social or local into your app discovery, you would be fine. However, either we are not social enough, or Apple is going back on its position. Either way, it appears the scope of 2.25 continues to grow and I think they aim to be the only provider of recommendations for apps, along with being the distributor." The developer who sent the rejection to PocketGamer has chosen to remain anonymous at this time. Hopefully Apple will work with developers to clarify the expanding guidelines for recommendation apps.
Daily Update for April 18, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Apple kills AppGratis' push notifications
What? You thought you were going to be able to make it through another day without an update on what's going on with AppGratis? Sorry to disappoint you -- Apple has now added insult to injury by killing push notifications for AppGratis. The company let subscribers know this morning in an emailed newsletter that Apple had killed notifications. TUAW sister site TechCrunch received a copy of an email sent to Italian AppGratis subscribers, which told them why they hadn't received a push notification from the app and notes that AppGratis plans to launch a daily special offers newsletter to inform subscribers of the app offers it is famous for. Simon Dawlat, the outspoken CEO of AppGratis, was back on the blog soapbox this morning noting that the company is planning on going back to its roots in circumventing the app ban by sending out the newsletter to its estimated 12 million users and also putting together an HTML5 web app. As TechCrunch's Natasha Lomas points out, "Going forward, AppGratis will have to rely on emailing its subscribers (and no one likes to be spammed via email too often) to inform them of offers." Asking those subscribers to migrate to the web app once it is working, with no way to send push notifications to them to generate the clicks that launch an app to top rankings in the App Store, might be nigh impossible.
AppGratis document shows disconnect between statement and promotion
Today's edition of "How the AppGratis Turns" finds Business Insider reporting on a "leaked document" showing that the company supplies developers with estimates on where their app will land in the App Store rankings based on how much they're willing to spend. This contradicts what AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat stated yesterday to TUAW sister site TechCrunch. In Dawlat's statement, he said that "We've never been in the business of gaming the top charts or anything." Business Insider contacted Dawlat about a chart they received showing that an approximately US$100,000 buy with AppGratis would place an app in the top five in the US App Store; something that BI considers to be at odds with what Dawlat said. Dawlat took a look at the chart published by BI and replied that "Today, mobile-media buying is this simple equation where the biggest industry players will acquire a certain number of installs through guys like AppGratis, Facebook Mobile Ads, Apple's iAd and all the other guys in order to reach their ranking objective." In other words, what Dawlat thinks is business as usual in the mobile app-marketing world is what Business Insider and Apple appear to see as disrupting the system. AllThingsD featured a guest post by former OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter last week in which he said that App Store rankings are so important to Apple that the company strives to keep them fair and democratic. Apps like AppGratis are seen as artificially inflating rankings based on how much a developer is willing to pay, totally at odds with Apple's goals and probably what lead to the current AppGratis ban. Well-known iOS developer David Barnard of App Cubby (@drbarnard) tweeted earlier today that "I don't get why BI and people linking to it make that chart out to be a bad thing or inconsistent with statements" made by Dawlat. Barnard noted that "many developers buy ads on launch day to help get that traction" in the App Store, essentially gaming the App Store rankings as well. Ads in the Facebook iOS app highlight a variety of apps that are for sale in the App Store. Will Facebook eventually face the wrath of Apple's iOS developer guidelines? Guideline 2.25 states that, "Apps that display apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected." How Apple interprets and applies that guideline to apps other than AppGratis that are also used to promote apps needs to be clarified quickly. For further details on this continuing story, a look at the previous posts about AppGratis is a good way to get some background.
Daily Update for April 15, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
AppGratis petition gathers hundreds of thousands of supporters
Last week, TUAW ran several stories about app-discovery and deals app AppGratis being pulled from the iOS App Store for alleged violations of Apple's developer guidelines. Now the developer is gathering online signatures to a petition in hopes that they can sway Apple to reconsider its ban of AppGratis. As of about 2 PM EDT today, the company had grabbed over 622,000 emails of support and the number is growing rapidly. Whether or not Apple will respond to the outside pressure is another matter; AppGratis reports that the company refuses to talk to them. If you're one of the over 12 million AppGratis users and would like to see the app set free, visit save.appgratis.com to add your voice to the petition.
AppGratis CEO: 'Apple has not returned any of our calls'
There's yet another update in the AppGratis saga. Earlier this week, the app-discovery and deals app was yanked from the App Store for violations of Apple's iOS developer guidelines. Several statements from Apple representatives have been posted on various blogs, saying that Apple is in conversations with AppGratis. According to AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat, those reports couldn't be further from the truth. On a post this morning on the AppGratis blog, Dawlat said: "It is important to me and my team that we clarify what happened. It is absolutely untrue that there were discussions between AppGratis and Apple in advance of our app being removed from Apple's platform. The first communication from Apple we received was an email sent to us after our app had been removed. Since our app was removed, we have had one telephone conversation with an Apple employee who repeated the content of Apple's email to us, and refused to discuss the matter further. Since then, Apple has not returned any of our calls. It goes without saying that I am still very keen to speak to them." You may want to visit the AppGratis blog just for the classic animated GIF image being used on the post. We'll keep our eyes and ears open for more on this story.
AppGratis CEO speaks out about app being pulled from App Store
One of the big stories yesterday was about the AppGratis app discovery and deals app being pulled from the App Store. As the story developed, there was confusion about what exactly caused Apple to yank the popular app (it has over 12 million users) -- was it something simple like instability and crashes that forced Apple's hand, or was Apple making a statement about apps that are violating certain guidelines? Today AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat published a long statement on the company blog telling his side of the story. Dawlat started by relating how he first heard about the app being pulled when he got off of an airplane in São Paulo, Brazil and received notifications for "over 75 missed calls, and an seemingly infinite flow of unread text messages." Next, he reassured the millions of users of the app that even though the app is "momentarily unavailable," anyone who downloaded the app prior to last Friday will still receive continued information about free apps and "cool discounts." Some speculation came out yesterday that the company may have used questionable tactics to grab more than 5 percent of the US iOS marketshare. Several developers I talked with about the AppGratis situation were critical of the company's business model, in which app developers pay for placement to drive up the rank of their apps. A Forbes article from February highlights this practice, where Dawlat himself describes how AppGratis moves developers up the charts and then grabs the app revenue for a set amount of time as payment. In other words, it's more of an advertising service than an app-recommendation service. Dawlat's blog post then describes which clauses in the iOS Developer Guidelines were questioned by Apple. The latest version of the app was actually approved by Apple on April 4, 2013 -- the day before it was pulled from the App Store. As reported by AllThingsD yesterday, Clause 5.6 -- dealing with the use of push notifications to send advertising, promotions or direct marketing -- was to blame. Additionally, Clause 2.25 prohibits apps that display apps "other than your own" for purchase or promotion. Dawlat found the push notification complaint to be somewhat foolish, saying that "...we only send one 'system notification' a day to our users, coming in the form of a generic, opt-in only 'Today's deal is here!' message." That practice is based on Apple's own recommendation on how to use the push notification service. The AppGratis CEO recounted phone calls yesterday with Apple, noting that they "... basically couldn't go beyond repeating multiple times that our app had been pulled due to guideline 2.25 and 5.6." Dawlat finished his post by listing his email address and stating, "If someone in charge at Apple reads this and wants to discuss the matter more in-depth, I'm happy to jump over to Cupertino anytime to prove to you that we're on a mission for good." He also asks happy users of AppGratis -- both on the end-user side and developers -- to share his post. The AppGratis situation has far-reaching implications for other app discovery apps, and this story is far from being at an end.
App-discovery service AppGratis pulled from Apple Store
AppGratis is an app that gives users a way to discover exciting new apps and get free apps every day. According to its developers, the app has over 10 million users worldwide. Sadly, AppGratis was pulled from the App Store for -- according to AllThingsD -- violating not only Apple's iOS developer guidelines Clause 2.25, but another guideline as well. Back in October, Apple added Clause 2.25 to the iOS developer guidelines stating that "Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected." In other words, the guidelines now prohibit exactly what AppGratis does. Developer Mahmoud Hafez, who runs the AppAdvice.com website and produces the similar Apps Gone Free app, told TUAW that he didn't think it was just Clause 2.25 that was the cause of AppGratis being pulled. Hafez explains that "Apple is not against these services and they do not inherently violate the developer agreement." Hafez provided some reasons why he thinks the removal was for reasons other than Clause 2.25: 1) App Gratis launched in the US after this clause existed. In fact, the iPad app debuted just last week. All these apps were approved, meaning Apple was okay with what they were doing even as of just a few days ago. The latest update that was submitted was their iPad app debut last week and it was approved. 2) Apple actually just added a new framework for developers to let users buy other people's apps from the App Store within the developers own app in iOS 6. Meaning they have a set way for others to promote apps other than their own. 3) There are many other apps that give users recommendations on other apps. In fact, Onavo recently discussed the entire industry of free app-finding apps and revealed several important players. Aside from App Gratis, all the other apps still remain in the App Store: http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2013/03/14/onavo-looks-at-the-market-share-for-app-discovery-apps/ AllThingsD reports that it was also Clause 5.6 that tripped up the app. That clause states that "Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions or direct marketing of any kind." Apple is apparently looking at other apps like this to see if they violate the developer guidelines as well.
