Release early, release often, and watch your users' emotions
This work addresses the problem of user retention for app vendors in competitive markets by providing actionable insights from sentiment analysis.
The study identified four recurring emotional patterns in user feedback corresponding to app releases and derived five release lessons to help app vendors maintain positive emotions and gain competitive advantages.
App stores are highly competitive markets, sometimes offering dozens of apps for a single use case. Unexpected app changes such as a feature removal might incite even loyal users to explore alternative apps. Sentiment analysis tools can help monitor users' emotions expressed, e.g., in app reviews or tweets. We found that these emotions include four recurring patterns corresponding to the app releases. Based on these patterns and online reports about popular apps, we derived five release lessons to assist app vendors maintain positive emotions and gain competitive advantages.