AppStoreReviews
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Poll: What kind of app reviewer are you?
As part of our duties here on TUAW, we often read App Store reviews for apps that we'll be covering. We find it particularly interesting how app reviews break down, especially for one- and five-star reviews. For some, reviews seem to be personal -- not about the product's merits, but how well it fits (or doesn't) into a user's lifestyle. For others, people feel an obligation to help promote an app they liked or to warn purchasers against an app that's unstable or a poor value. A lot of people buy apps and later are "meh" about 'em, and delete them. For the price of a coffee or less, many customers can't be bothered to write a bad in-store review about a mediocre app that gets tossed. What kind of reviewer are you? Here's a poll for you to vote in. Then join in the comments and tell us what motivates you to leave a review. We're also interested in hearing what each of the star ratings means to you. Is a three-star review "weak" or "average" for you? Let us know! %Poll-75551%
Script that crawls app store reviews reveals that people like things that are good, dislike things that aren't
Developer Marco Arment recently wrote a quick script which crawls various app store reviews and analyzes the words that they contain. Unsurprisingly, there are some common words to be found among the best -- and worst -- reviews. For apps that get great (or five star) reviews, common words found include 'awesome,' 'perfect' and 'simple,' while the apps that got terrible reviews turn up things like 'waste,' 'money,' and 'crashes.' So, what can we gather from this? The obvious, of course: most people only know between six and 12 words.
