[pg]

"How do you get on the Top Paid Apps list? You sell lots of apps. How do you sell lots of apps? You get yourself on the Top Paid Apps list."

They could fix this by using exponential decay like Reddit and HN do with stories on the front page.

[weaksauce]

That's a good solution.

Another solution is to offer a few different top paid lists for each of the common selling price ranges. So have one at 0-4.99, another at 5-10, etc.... That way some of the more expensive ones are treated quasi fairly.

Also the ratings should be weighted towards the people that actually purchased the app.

[pg]

Or they could sort the list by expected return. I.e. by the chance of selling a copy times the sale price. That would also maximize Apple's revenue.

[weaksauce]

Yeah, it would seem that they are giving up a lot of income because they have a fairly lowtech method of highlighting the best sellers.

They should look at poaching some of the google talent or look at acquiring a startup that does something similar if they cannot build it internally.

[DenisM]

That requires expertise, not unlike, say, picking a winnig startup to fund. :-)

[pg]

I meant they could do it based on past data.

[jfarmer]

Or they could just sort by revenue rather than sales.