Google
Play star rating doesn't help much to gauge the popularity of apps. It
also doesn't help to inform users about how responsive the developers
are to users' feedback. What the star rating does is to average off the
rating of earlier versions down to the latest ones.Hence, if the earlier
versions were good and millions voted for 5 stars, that rating stays
throughout. Even when the app failed later that resulted in millions who
removed the apps, the star rating would still contain the previous
votes. If that is the case, it will not tell new users how good the app
currently is. To me, when the star rating is not real-time it does not
help. That is because it won't help users to gauge the real-time
performance/popularity of the app in question.
Another
benchmark about app performance (or popularity) is the number of
downloads. Most hot apps would have millions "downloaded". However, this
benchmark is also not useful for the same reason as the star rating,
i.e. it is not real-time. Assume that initial release of the apps
attracted millions to download it. The millions love it, but then due to
complacency on the developers' part, the app lost its luster and
millions removed the apps from their phones. Such movement is not
reflected on the scale. To me, that is not informative. For all I know,
the 10 millions downloaded could well be "1000 still using it" scenario.
All-in-all,
these two ratings are not being helpful to both users and developers.
If these ratings or benchmarks can be made into real-time, it would help
users to decide if they want to waste their phone memory downloading
the apps. Also, real-time rating will pressurize developers into
addressing users' feedback in order to keep their rating high because
they can't afford to have the rating drop overnight!
Wouldn't that be a good idea, Google?
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