It seems technicians over at The AA were working hard over the Easter Holidays following a war of words between Manchester’s Stardotstar and its president, Edmund King.
Nosey Parker
The Twitter-based tussle surrounded Stardotstar’s Nosey Park App, the first UK-wide car park location programme for the iPhone. It sells at £1.79 and at one point was 21st in the UK App Store.
However, on April 1st, the AA launched a rival App, which does pretty much the same thing and retails at an identical price.
The problem, wrote Gareth Langley, Stardotstar’s director of business development in an open letter to King, was not the competition, but this:
“What we didn’t expect was to type in the name of our app in the App Store search engine and see your app. There are only three elements that are queried when someone searches in the app store: the app name, the developer’s name and the keywords, and the Apple guidelines make it clear that using other apps’ names in your keywords is not allowed.
“We understand that you would like a piece of our pie, but piggy backing on our app’s success by using our brand name is not fair game. We therefore formally ask you to remove all references to our app in your keywords with immediate effect.”
And they Tweeted as much to @aapresident (ie King) and got this response:
"@NoseyParkerApp Get a Life. Happy Easter. Don't understand you RT? 5:46 AM Apr 3rd via mobile web"
King has since gone on to apologise a number of times for the Tweet. He also said he would be launching an investigation with AA Publishing:
“No I didn't understand issue as it was not explained. Now I can do something. I accept not the best use of English but no malice 4:39 AM Apr 4th
“Not so much a battle as a misunderstanding. I have asked for App investigation, apologised if my tweet was taken the wrong way 4:26 AM Apr 4th via web”
“I hold up my hands and accept not my best use of English. I meant explain the problem dont just complain. Edmund”
As of this morning, it seems the matter has been resolved, with only the Nosey Parker app coming up in the search.
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