ADC2 Fails to Represent Fan Favorites

adc2logo1 The Android Developer Challenge 2 winners were announced… but it doesn’t seem like many are satisfied with the results. As I looked down the list of winners, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of favorite apps of mine were—gasp—missing! Blasphemy! How did this happen?

One part of the ADC2 rules is that the application cannot already be in the market. To circumvent this, many developers decided to release a new version of their app, and therefore allowing it to go into the ADC2 app-testing circulation. This is a bit sneaky, but honestly, if we didn’t have developers doing this, we would probably not even recognize the majority of the names in the contender or winner lists. And therein lays the problem: some of the most popularly used apps are not represented by ADC2.

On our recent podcast #29, we discussed the ADC2 and the many favorite apps that did not make the cut. There could be many reasons for this, even though some of my faves made it into the circulation. The first reason is that many users would skip that app, simply because they already have it on their phone and like it. Alternately, they may skip it because it is awful and has already been removed from their phone. Basically, the biggest problem is that for apps that put in a new version, there’s no way to rate them if you have them already. After some thinking, I’ve proposed a solution to this issue.

Google could consider adding some extra choices when you “skip” an application through the ADC2 app. This would allow the tester to say whether they already have the app or uninstalled it. And if they have it, then the tester should be allowed to complete the same survey questions that are given when downloading other apps they don’t have yet. By adding this tiered response system, a more accurate picture of how Android users feel could be seen.

What do you think? I’m sure there are a lot of good ideas out there regarding a better way to judge apps that released a new version to participate in ADC2. Leave us a comment explaining your solution and the top two will be added to this post with attribution!