Dear Google,
every now and then I come up with idea of buying another game in the play store (yes, a mobile game, for Android). So I browse and browse and finally give up again. The main entry views give me a few promoted items, which mostly are uninteresting as a game, the top lists show games which I already checked out the last time, or already bought, the recommendation show hardly any interesting games. The same is true for non-game apps (I wouldn’t always call them productive apps ;-) ).
Even more funny is the rating for normal apps. I do understand that showing more games of the same type is a good idea when I gave 5 stars to the game in question, but when I tell you that I found a (e.g.) file manager that I really like, the least thing I want is another list of similar file managers. I just told you I found a good one! So in the case of normal app, giving 1 star should trigger the “show others” list. But this is only a side quest.
If you got some music subscription service like Spotify, Google Music All Access or whatever you like else, then you pretty soon find out that there is so much music out there, you sometimes wish for somebody to tell you: “Listen to this one”. Google Music does that by suggesting you songs and “radio stations”. But really those radio stations repeat themselves after a few hours of listening. So it seems there is not much AI behind them, probably just a shuffled playlist.
The bright side to this is, both Spotify and Google Music (probably others as well) do have something like “shared playlists”. So once you found somebody you share the same taste, you will probably find more games and apps you like. However, just considering “all apps of this person” a good match is not a good idea. Just consider the fact that some people install all kind of rubbish. On the other hand some people really do have a talent to curate a few play lists.
Now here is what would be a great idea. Curated are there in Youtube (aka Channels, or Playlists), in Google Music (shared playlists), in Spotify (again shared playlists). So instead of letting people search for “best games android 2015”, give people a chance to:
- Create playlists for apps/games
- Let them embed the playlists in their homepages
- Maybe even give them a share on purchased items
It’s easy! For games they could even be called “play lists” ;-)
PS: I guess the same is still valid for the Apple App Store