Developers both allowed back after rule violations

Two completely different app developers who ran afoul of Apple's policies have made major changes in an effort to keep their business model workable, from changing how their apps promote other offerings to completely revamping content presentation. Tapjoy, who found their cross-promotion efforts stymied by changes in the way Apple calculates app popularity, vowed to reform their practices to avoid gaming the system (reports All Things D), while Zite Magazine replaced its CEO and revamped its magazine-style content to conform to demands from publishers.

Zite's changes were in response to a Cease & Desist letter sent to it from numerous content publishers including including Getty Images, the Associated Press, Dow Jones & Company, Gannett, The McClatchy Company, E.W. Scripps, National Geographic, Time Inc., The Slate Group and The Washington Post. The group complained that the iPad-exclusive magazine simply republished and reformatted articles without permission and without directing readers to the original source, in effect using other people's content to make money and implying a non-existent affiliation and consent by featuring the logos of the content providers on Zite's home screen.

In response, the company has moved former CEO Ali Davar to the position of president and installed former SideStep and Bing developer Mark Johnson as CEO. The company has released a revamped v1.1 of the magazine app and won approval on the App Store. Zite now places articles in "web mode" for default viewing unless publishers have given an okay otherwise. "Web mode" directs readers to the full article on the producer's original site, which may include ads or other content.

The program also offers a "reading mode" similar to Safari's "Reader" feature that re-styles the content into a more readable form with an emphasis on clean, uncluttered design and typography. Sharing options (posting links to the articles via FaceBook, Twitter, Instapaper and Delicious) are now available in both modes, and performance has generally been enhanced. An option for readers to manually convert a "web mode" article into a "reading mode" one is available but is no longer done automatically.

Zite now performs similarly to its main competitors, Flipboard and Pulse. The revised app is now available on the App Store for free (requires iOS 3.2 or later).

Tapjoy's "sins" had been less of a legal nature and more along the lines of taking advantage of loopholes in Apple's ranking system, essentially allowing developers to pay companies like Tapjoy a fee to inflate downloads, which formerly moved apps into top slots in Apple's charts regardless of app quality or genuine popularity. Like other companies, Tapjoy would reward users of one app with "virtual currency" or other rewards for installing and opening another app. The market for this sort of operation was created by the limit of 25 to 50 slots in Apple's rankings -- when an app would make it to one of these slots, sales were strongly bolstered compared to not being in the top slots.

In response, Apple has taken limited punitive steps -- rejecting some apps that contained certain Tapjoy promotions -- and expanded the number of slots in their top charts to 300, as well as using other factors beyond just sheer number of downloads as justification for placing apps in the top slots. Specifically, Apple seems to be downgrading apps that use the cross-promotion inducements that Flurry, W3i and Tapjoy (among others) employed to artificially inflate popularity. The company has vowed to tweak and alter the objectionable promotions and says it has seen some apps approved since making changes.

Tapjoy CEO Mihir Shah told attendees at the Venturebeat Mobile Summit in Sausalito, California that that company was prepared to "tack a few ways" to make its business model sustainable yet abide by the rules of Apple's App Store. "We're very early in the [app promotion] market," he said, explaining that guidelines were still fluid and limits being defined. [Tapjoy information via All Things D]

by MacNN Staff