This developer is flooding your appstore with 1,000 new apps per week

21 points by whatts 12 years ago | 8 comments

Developed by a german company called Tobit.Software [1], "chayns" has produced more than 10,000 apps to date [2], all flooding the popular app stores [3].

"chayns" turns Facebook pages into mobile apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry, automatically, trying to make your profession as a developer obsolete.

On Android alone, the company uses more than 30 developer accounts to push 10,000 apps per week to Google Play [4].

Is this compliant with Google's policies? No [5]. Does Google care? It doesn't seem so.

Today, Google updated its policies for developers, but are they credible at all? "chayns" did also violate against the old version of the Content Policy.

"chayns", in the meanwhile, is filling entire cinema halls with aspiring new developers that are going to spam your app store as well [6].

[1] <http://new.tobit.com/> (German) [2] <http://www.iphone-ticker.de/spam-tobit-software-baut-apps-aus-10-000-facebook-seiten-57671/> (German) [3] <http://www.tobit.com/chayns?lang=eng_us> [4] <https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Tobit.Software> up to <https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Tobit.Software+GER31> [5] <https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html> ("Spam" section) [6] <http://images.vogel.de/vogelonline/bdb/698700/698727/4.jpg>

jaredsohn 12 years ago |

I don't think the motive is "trying to make your profession as a developer obsolete" or that these actions are effective in doing so.

whatts 12 years ago | |

That depends. If we talk about high-quality apps, innovative applications, products used by millions of users, I'm sure you're right. And I guess most HN users (if involved at all), will probably doing these things. But for smaller apps, smaller companies/clients, I definitely disagree. Those companies will start to think that every business should have its own app, just as everybody needs their own website, and so they turn to "chayns" (or competitors) to get a free mass-produced app. That does harm to the overall quality of apps as well, of course.

AbhishekBiswal 12 years ago |

This reminds me of the developer who made over 47,000 Blackberry apps.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/one-developer-makes-o...

whatts 12 years ago | |

Yes, definitely. And we can see that 1,000+ apps per week, maybe even growing, can quickly result in 47,000 apps here as well.

dholowiski 12 years ago |

I have an appstore?

whatts 12 years ago | |

I knew that some nitpicker would discuss exactly this phrase ;) It's the appstore that "you are using", or the appstore that is "installed on your phone", in case you don't know what I'm referring to, otherwise.

gm 12 years ago | | |

It's not a nitpick. But whatever, it's not my app store that's affected.