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The Artificial Life of the App Store

Posted by timothy on from the how-about-global-thermonuclear-war? dept.

mikejuk writes "How does the Apple App Store actually work? What is the best strategy to employ if you want to get some users and make some money? There are some pointers on how it all works from an unusual source — artificial life. A pair of researchers Soo Ling Lim and Peter Bentley from University College London, set up an artificial life simulation of the app store's ecosystem. They created app developers with strategies such as — innovate, copy other apps, create useless variations on a basic app or try and optimize the app you have. What they found, among other things, was that the CopyCat strategy was on average the best. When they allow the strategies to compete and developer agents to swap then the use of the CopyCat fell to only 10%. The reason — more than 10% CopyCats resulted in nothing new to copy!"

2 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Perhaps they can... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps they can simulate how to make slashdot summaries make sense next?

  2. Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In my simulation the best strategy was to take 30% of everyone's revenues.