It’s just just over a month since I first uploaded Musical to the Android Market. Since then I’ve gotten 17,500 downloads (over 8000 active installs), 318 reviews (for an average of 4/5 stars), and emails from over 40 users.

In the process I’ve learned quite a bit about how the Market operates and more importantly, about dealing with its users. The following is a collection of notes, helpful tips, and my thoughts on the Android Market…

Your download rate will drop off rapidly once you have fallen below the first few pages of recent application section. I’m not sure whether publishing early on helped or hurt me in this regard. On one hand, there were less users to notice it when it was there, but on the other hand, there were also less applications to push it out of the way. One thing is clear though: timing is everything. Watch the trends of the market and choose your release time wisely (think both about when users will be checking and when other apps will be released)

You will get some undeserved terrible reviews from people who didn’t even bother trying out your application. As your application falls from the front page, however, these will go WAY down, as the only users that will find your application are those who are searching for it. Be prepared for it and don’t take it personally. The following is an incomplete list of what to expect:

• “First!!!1″ There will inevitably be some clown who decides to post “first”. In fact, you will likely get many “first” comments (some of which are clearly much too late to the game). The commenters will not bother looking at your application (speed is the idea) and the rating will depend solely on where their finger smashed in their mad rush to be stupid.
• People who clearly have not read the description or any directions at all in your application (see bullet point further down for details)
• Completely irrelevant suggestions/questions for other applications. Examples:

  “When is someone gonna create Live SRIP [sic] POKER where women can use the G1 camera feature to play..I’m not the only 1 who thought of this come on”

  “Does anyone know where I can download a video player that plays avi mpeg and wmv files for the g1″

  Questions about when the flash player is coming out for Android

• Advertising for completely irrelevant websites… I’m not even going to bother posting any of them, for fear of promoting them in any way, but I’ve gotten quite a few idiots posting their website/product/service and talking about how great it is
• Useless broken-English comments

  “Im about to give up …. g1 sux big time”

  “This sucks ballz”

  “This is sum bullshit whom ever come up with this need to kill yourself” (I particularly like their incorrect and clearly futile attempt at grammar by hypercorrecting and using whom)

• Useless and unhelpful comments (one word adjectives, both good and bad) and some just plain bizarre stuff. One of my favorites: (regarding the metronome) “My stolen one from sam ash work way better”
• Useful comments! Yes, despite what seems like an endless supply of idiots, there really are a lot of intelligent and helpful users out there, posting both good and bad reviews.

People will not read the description, the on-screen directions, or the large popups that you force them to acknowledge (and some people just can’t understand them):

• I decided to release the keyboard early (based on all the emails I’d gotten about it–more on that later) but it wasn’t totally stable yet. Also, based on the comments I had seen on other applications, people were going to expect it to support multitouch (despite Android not currently supporting it)… so, I though, “aha! I’ll outsmart them and make this information extremely clear”. In the description, I included “G1 DOESN’T SUPPORT MULTITOUCH!!!”; in the application, I noted “Warning! Extremely unstable! Preliminary release–use at your own risk!” on the menu and “Warning, the keybaord is currently unstable!!! The G1 does no support multi-touch, therefore this keyboard does not either” in a full-screen popup that loads every time you open the keyboard. What’s the first comment I get? 1/5 stars:”We still need multi tap and why does it freeze your phone”
• I’ve gotten a lot of requests to add a tuner to the application. This is not currently possible, so I decided to just add that to the description to save me the time of responding to the emails. “Tuner not currently possible (Android doesn’t support live audio analysis)”. Yet I still get emails asking why there is no tuner.
• On the pitch pipe screen it says “Press and hold the center of the pitch pipe above to play a pitch.” There is also a checkbox labeled “Activate by blowing (into mic below)” (see previous post for screenshots). So… inevitably there will be comments from users asking how to use it (not understanding that I have no way to respond to comments): “How to make pitch pipe work? What do u mean by blowing into mic below?”

Users are extremely demanding and will start posting negative reviews if you do not release updates quickly enough (only some of which bother to remove it after you do finally update). I had a list of features I was planning on adding in the application and started getting negative reviews for not including them after only about a week.

Users expect you to be able to respond to comments (asking questions, etc). You can’t, and there is nothing you can do about this. You just have to hope they realize this (they won’t) and use the Email Developer button instead.

The 350 character description word limit is very difficult. It is impossible to include a description of the application, release notes, updates, and responses to common issues in 350 characters (and it is the only place you even have a chance of getting users to read). Be prepared to cut your message short and leave everything but the most important points. As a side note, the Market should provide some way to add screenshots of the application as well.

There is no PC/Desktop/Internet interface to the Market (besides the Developer backend–updates and download statistics). All comments/reviews must be read on the device. Hopefully this will be fixed, as it is irritating from the user perspective as well to browse applications on a small screen.

Responding to user emails is extremely helpful. I’ve tried to respond to every (intelligent) email I’ve gotten about the application. Unlike when people complain/comment/question in the reviews, I can respond and help them via email. It’s been very helpful for prioritizing features, and I feel like I’m establishing a relationship with the users. I keep track of every email I receive, and whenever I release a new feature, I send out a message to everyone who had asked about it (requested/suggested it, asked when it was coming out, etc). Although I get the occasional blank or useless (similar to comments) email, as a whole, the emailing system has been extremely fruitful.

This post may sound rather negative, but as a whole, the users of the Market really are nice, intelligent people. Unfortunately, there are just enough others to sour the developer experience…