Item — HN Reader

> Uber would do poorly by this metric because I rarely need to take a black car anywhere, so even though the app is great I rarely open it.

Would prospective purchasers realize this, though, by the nature of the app? In other words, would I also realize that I would rarely use it (on a daily basis), but see that you do continue to come back to the app and haven't deleted it over a long period of time?

> The app that shows me when my bus is coming is pretty crappy, but I use it multiple times a day.

If you use it multiple times a day, then you apparently are finding it useful enough to continue coming back to it. And in my mind, that's all I care about.

I know this isn't perfect, but again compared to user reviews, this would be way better in a large majority of the cases.

Especially in a genre where it's getting abused, like games.

2 comments

> Would prospective purchasers realize this, though, by the nature of the app?

So what you're saying is, we should burden the users with a ton of metrics, then let them figure out which of those metrics are useful for each particular app, and whether you want a higher or lower score on each of those metrics on a case-by-case basis?

There are many ways usage stats can be used to provide more value than ratings. Provide a ton of metrics to those that like them and know how to interpret them, or aggregate them somehow for those that want an "X out of 10" ranking.

Or anywhere in between.

Well, what do the stars actually mean? Is it a measure of whether or not the app is useful? Or some subjective measure of how "good" it is?

I shudder when I think of the ways you could game a system like this. If longer time-in-app is a positive signal, I could easily make my app slower.

> Well, what do the stars actually mean? Is it a measure of whether or not the app is useful? Or some subjective measure of how "good" it is?

Right now, they're pretty meaningless, because often, the majority those that take time to review them are counterfeit. 90% of the people that use an app never take time to review it. So I never know what most people think.

> I shudder when I think of the ways you could game a system like this.

As it stands, I can't think of how there would be more gameability to a system like this vs. ratings. Ratings are so easy to game, anybody can do it, and it doesn't cost them anything.

To game something like this, I would have to "game" it over long periods of time. Not to mention, I would have to purchase a separate device, or sacrifice my own time with my device.

It's a much more painful process to game something like this.

> If longer time-in-app is a positive signal, I could easily make my app slower.

If you make your app slower, you are sacrificing user experience, which will eventually hurt your usage. How could you game your own app without it hurting the usability of it?