Tell Santa Claus, Revisited
by Sean Capelle
December 8, 2011
Approximately 1,000 apps are released to the App Store daily, and only a handful of them get reviewed by the App Advice team. It's our job to dissect the app into its different components and analyze them for sharing with you, the reader.
For the developer, this could be an opportunity to promote their app; to see how the readers will respond. Anyone who is a developer, or who has shared something they created, knows how anxious waiting for feedback feels.
But what if the feedback isn't so great?
Last week I reviewed the app, Tell Santa Claus by Golden Train, which managed to cause a bit of controversy over the rating I had given it. The overall tone of the review was favorable, but I did bring up some aspects that I felt were lacking. Thinking too quickly, I assigned the app two out of five stars.
Not only had you, the readers, posted your disagreement with the rating, but Mohammad Bitar, co-founder of GoldenTrain, shared his thoughts with me in an email as well. It's one thing when one person complains, it's another when the same complaint comes from multiple people.
I reflected on the complaints and came to the conclusion that my rating didn't align with the article. As an App Advice writer, I always strive to evaluate an app fairly (and to also use puns whenever I can). At times, though, I fall short (on both counts).
But it appeared that GoldenTrain looked at it in a different light.
Bitar said in an email, “...when you first wrote the review for Tell Santa Claus, I thought it was the worst thing to ever happen. It destroyed any hopes of our app getting any attention. But it turned out to be the best thing to ever happen to this app!”
He was able to see the app through a new set of eyes due to the feedback from the article. In a 2.0 update, the purpose of the app switched from trying to gather gift ideas from friends and family, to having them record and send their ideas to you.
You never know what the future may hold (although there are still plenty of apps for that), but even something perceived as negative at first could, in fact, be something positive you never knew you were looking for.