899111 - Popular apps listing is skewed towards Android which less useful

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Search, defect)

Description

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

The top popular apps when looking at the Marketplace on FxOS are now apps that work on Android as well. FxOS-only apps rarely come up are are hidden in the last pages.

The popular apps seem to be currently generated by an algorithm that doesn't differ between downloads per platform. If the score would include platform in some measure, it could provide more useful listings.

Comment 1

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

We don't skew the results, we simply have more apps made for Android. I disagree, though, that we should give preference to Firefox OS-only apps. That seems sketchy since apps are supposed to work equally well on all web platforms.

There have been talks about "delightful apps" as a means of helping quality apps rise to the surface. I'd expect a PRD about that soon.

Comment 2

[David Bialer [:dbialer]]

For popularity - ideally we would filter this by platform (device capability such as screen size?), country (region), and language selected.

Is that possible?  That way it would produce more relevant results.

There are other plans for things like 'delightful' apps, which would surface more in specialized collections - which is meant to enhance discovery by serendipity, like interests, and novelty - human-based recommendations.   Also, there will also be a 'recommender system', which is more algorithmic (machine learning based) way of personalizing apps discovery based on a collaborative-based filtering approach.  But the 'delightful' part, as sugested, will first be Mozilla-created collections and then opened up to community-based collections to determine what may be delightful.

Comment 3

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

(In reply to David Bialer [:dbialer] from comment #2)
> For popularity - ideally we would filter this by platform (device capability
> such as screen size?), country (region), and language selected.
> 
> Is that possible?  That way it would produce more relevant results.

We're removing the platform buckets in the coming weeks/months, so we couldn't actually sort by that. We are filtering and will be doing more filtering, but I think the issue here is that apps that support both Android and FXOS are sometimes shown above apps that are only available for FXOS.

Fundamentally, I don't think we can prioritize results based on the feature detection we've built: you either support all the minimum required features or you don't.

Comment 4

[David Bialer [:dbialer]]

So ideally, this should sort itself out if we filter results by only showing those apps that meet the feature detection requirements.  Perhaps we adjust this in the future if needed, but am thinking we wait and see as we get more apps and more FxOS devices in the market if this seeming bias to Android supported apps readjusts.  This also encourages true cross-platform apps and makes sense that these apps have wider audiences and can therefore be more popular.

I would non for either a WONTFIX or keep it a P4 so it stays on the radar to revisit in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014.

Comment 5

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

(In reply to David Bialer [:dbialer] from comment #4)
> So ideally, this should sort itself out if we filter results by only showing
> those apps that meet the feature detection requirements.

I believe we're already doing this.

> Perhaps we adjust
> this in the future if needed, but am thinking we wait and see as we get more
> apps and more FxOS devices in the market if this seeming bias to Android
> supported apps readjusts.

I agree.

> I would non for either a WONTFIX or keep it a P4 so it stays on the radar to
> revisit in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014.

I'm going to WONTFIX since in the short term this isn't something we can really do much about, and our mechanism for "un-biasing" is going to be removed soon. The feed is going to be really overhauling this whole mechanic anyway, so keeping it around in the long term isn't going to make tons of sense.