Dec
12
Medialets gets it wrong, again! **Updated Again**
I was reading Fast Company’s post titled, ‘Most Popular Android Apps for November 2008‘. Medialets created their own ordering (i.e. not the order of popularity Google uses):
So, if you look at applications by popularity in the Android Market you will find that The Weather Channel is the MOST popular application. MySpace comes in third and Pac Man isnt near the top. ShopSavvy (our application and why I care) is second. Medialets wont’ return our calls and I have confirmed they are not getting any inside intel from Google or T-Mobile. Their numbers are bunk. Anyone from Medialets care to comment? Love to chat further!
UPDATE: So Eric Litman the CEO from Medialets called me no less than 24 minutes after I posted this (Woot to Eric and Medialets). He explained that they are pulling numbers from the ‘download range’ instead of the application popularity page from the Market. I can understand how his team came up with the rankings – i.e. Pac-Man on top, but I think this has more to do with quirks in the market. I didn’t pull my punches with the title of this post, maybe I should chill out a little – sorry Eric. Application popularity as defined by downloads can be easily pulled up by selecting Market, then All Applications and then Sort by Popularity. Here is the list:
- The Weather Channel
- ShopSavvy
- MySpace Mobile
- US Yellow Pages (really?)
- Free Dictionary
- Ringdroid
- DailyHoroscope
- CompareEverywhere
- Backgrounds and
- Imeem Music
- Movies and Shoptimes
- Barcode Scanner
- Shazam
- WikiMobile Encyclopedia
- Pro Basketball
- VIdeo Player
- Pro Footbal Live
- AK Notepad
- PicSay
- AccuWeather.com
- Bartender
- Flashlight
- Tanslate
- fBook – Facebook
- Power Manager
- Stopwatch
- T-Mobile HotSpot
- Mobile Banking
- Restaurant Guide
- Note Pad
- Weather Bug
- Pkt Auctions eBay
- OI Notepad
- College Football Live
- Voice Recoder
- Tip Calculator
- Rings Extended
- Magic 8-Ball
and so on…
Just to be clear, I did not try to contact Medialets today. When I said, “Medialets won’t return our calls…” I was referring to calls I made to the company back in October when they wrote a post titled, “Android Market Unleshed“. The post talked about the ‘Drivers of Android Market’ relative to downloads and popularity, but failed to mention our application at all. I was annoyed and called the company – calls that we were never returned. Here was the graphic that failed to include ShopSavvy despite the fact that we were number 2:
I even posted a comment to their post, but they did not moderate it (i.e. it never appeared). So when I saw that they had another ‘popularity post’ that didn’t accurately reflect the current standings in the market I felt like I had to post my thoughts.
I too wondered about the reliability of the ranking order as I saw this post on LifeHacker about Pacman being on top. That got me wondering… maybe their metrics are accurate as they are an analytics firm, and I assumed they pulled those figures on how their clients (Android developers) stack up against each other???
I was in the process of writing a post questioning the validity of the figures because this is what I see in the Market:
1. The Weather Channel
2. ShopSavvy
3. MySpace Mobile
4. US Yellow Pages (really? really?)
blah… blah… blah…
Comment by AndroidTapp.com — December 14, 2008 @ 9:56 am
[...] By the end of the 2008, MySpace Mobile will be the 3rd most downloaded appin the Android App Market (according to how Google’s App Market gauges Popularity). On a side note, many other blogs and websites have been regurgitating inaccurate stats from Fast Company’s article derived from a report by Medialets that Alex Muse of ShopSavvy oft refutes. [...]
Pingback by MySpace Mobile: Super Popular Android App, Super Sad Results | Android Tapp. Android App Reviews — December 22, 2008 @ 11:09 am