Today I’ve seen three articles so far that mention how the “Just In” section of the Android Market, which was recently removed, was borderline useless or just not that valuable for either developers or users. To play devil’s advocate, I’m going to go over why it is good and should be brought back.
The “Just In” section of the Android Market does have it’s faults and does encourage crappy games and apps and the developers behind them to spam that particular category. This can be done in a couple of way such as releasing the same game with a different package name, releasing the same game but just with a different skin or by simply changing the version number every 24 hours. There are a lot of benefits though that the “Just In” section brought along with it though.
I have the added benefit of not just being in the media running this site but before that I was a developer for a fair amount of time on Android. I started back when it first game out and developed the entire time until March 2010 when this site started. I have a unique perspective since not only am I in the media, I was a developer and I’m also a user and the one section I checked more often, by a large margin, was the “Just In” section.
The main benefit is exposure for indie developers. Whether it’s a game or an app, the Just In section was your gateway to getting noticed by Android users. Sure there may have been a lot of spam in there but the “Just In” section let anyone who released an app or a game get some sort of immediate exposure to Android users which is invaluable. Without the Just In section, unless you know the name of a game or developer, you are stuck with sifting through the Top Paid or Top Free lists which is dominated usually by games and apps that have been out for sometime or that have been developed by major design studios.
Now, without the “Just In” section, indie developers have to rely on, hopefully, getting featured at some point which is definitely not an easy thing to have happen. Developers get an immediate boost in downloads and sales when their game or app is visible in the “Just In” section which is why some developers choose to spam that section. When your game or app leaves the “Just In” section those numbers decline, sometimes rather quickly depending on the category your game or app resides in.
As for the problem regarding the spam that it causes, this doesn’t solve any issue regarding app/game spam at all. It just puts it under a mat so we don’t see it as much. Developers of crappy games and applications will continue to spam the market, if not more so now than ever. Without the “Just In” section, these developers who spam the market with crap will have to rely on user search results. This means more copies of games with different names even though they are the same and keyword spamming. Nothing says awesome like looking up a game and getting 50 results that are completely irrelevant to what you are searching for.
As a media outlet (and heavy Android Market user), we get a lot of press releases and tips from indie developers and major studios about their new games and we read every single one of them but there are plenty of developers out there who don’t send out press releases that have great games. An example of this would be the Destroy Gunners 3D Mech game. I found that in the “Just In” section and even though it’s a high quality game, we didn’t get any sort of press release or tip about it. We found it in the “Just In” section.
Of course this won’t stop indie developers from making new and cool games and apps but it makes it harder to find them and exposure is hard enough on the Android Market that one more avenue of exposure is always better than one less avenue, even if it is filled with some developers who just spam the hell out of it. We love hear from indie developers about their new games but it’s also exciting to find that gem in the rough that no one has heard or contacted us about and reporting on it.
There are other solutions to look at when it comes to the spam that exists on the Android Market but I don’t think that cutting our nose off to spite our face is the proper solution and that is what removing the “Just In” section is doing. Removing the spam from in front of our faces but hurting the indie developers out there that need the exposure. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the “Just In” section and there is probably just as many people who don’t use it as there are that do use it. Removing it solves nothing though, it just makes us look prettier.
This is where you guys, our readers come in. Let us know what you think! Should it stay gone or should Google bring back the “Just In” section. Solutions for fixing the spam problem?
