Every time I go to the 'New Applications' category of the marketplace, all I see is spam. Hundreds of applications have been certified in the past in a single day consistently causing increase in number of applications but most of them being pushed out are basically spam so it isn't helping the marketplace at all. This is anti Windows Phone marketplace philosophy - Remember Quality > Quantity?
Tod Brix, from Windows phone blog wrote on how Microsoft plans to tackle this issue.
In recent weeks a handful of companies have individually published hundreds of apps in a matter of a few days. We call this bulk publishing. While these apps meet our certification requirements and give consumers a wider selection of content, we’re also finding that publishing them in bulk degrades our customers’ experience. By publishing hundreds of apps in a short amount of time, the popular “New” Marketplace list category fills quickly, pushing the other new apps out and reducing the diversity of the shopping experience.Microsoft’s philosophy is that an app marketplace should balance quality, choice and variety with a great customer experience – which includes easy shopping and discoverability. We offer customers thousands of apps and games, and we don’t want to compromise the quality of our shared customers’ experiences in using – or shopping for - any one of those apps. We’ve evaluated the impact of bulk publishing, reviewed some very thoughtful input from both our user base and our developer community and concluded that we need to take the following steps to restore the balance of choice and experience.To avoid the scenario where bulk publishing crowds out other apps in Marketplace in the future, effective immediately, we are limiting the number of apps any one developer can have certified in a single day to 20. Developers creating a large number of apps can still submit all of them for certification, but they will be certified at a maximum rate of 20 per day rather than all at once. This change helps us retain a balance of choice and customer experience by enabling customers to see a broader and more representative assortment of new apps from the developer community when they see “New” apps every day. As with all policies, the limit is subject to change based on the ongoing evolution of Marketplace and input from customers and developers.
In addition, we are reaching out to the companies who most recently published a large number of apps with similar functionality in a short period of time. We’re offering to work with these developers to explore how they can better take advantage of the Windows Phone platform to improve the functionality of their apps and reduce the need for large numbers of similar apps. Many of the most recently published bulk apps are being removed from Marketplace while these developers update and republish their apps.
Effective immediately, Microsoft will impose a limit of 20 applications certifications per developer in a single day. The idea is definitely smart, will satisfy both developers and consumers to a certain extent. Microsoft is also working with developers to sort this issue out. Some of the the applications which come under the ' bulk publishing ' category are being removed and asked to resubmit. It's important to note that these applications do pass the certification test it's just the bulk publishing makes it harder for users to hunt for new and exciting applications which hide under truckload of useless applications. Not anymore. I am glad Microsoft is addressing the issue before the release of mango since with the release of mango, developer application submission and marketplace will be available in 19 more countries which would have resulted in utter chaos.
