Few seem to heed Tim Cook's directions on mapping apps

For developers, getting noticed is more than half the battle.

At a time when the big operating systems have more than half a million apps available for sale, developers have an increasingly hard time breaking through. A whole industry has sprung up around "app discovery," offering developers ways to promote their work to an audience that likely wouldn't find them otherwise.

In such an environment, recommendations are essential. And it's hard to imagine a more valuable recommendation than a personal endorsement from the CEO of the world's most valuable technology company.

But less than a week after Tim Cook suggested that iPhone owners unhappy with the new Apple Maps application try out its competitors, few appear to have gotten any long-term boost in traffic. Neither Bing and Waze, both recommended by Cook, has risen the top of the charts in the wake of his widely read letter. After an initial spike in downloads, both have fallen precipitously.

Waze, whose chart ranking has floated around the 70s over the last month, briefly made it to 20 after the announcement, according to AppShopper. It has since fallen to 36. That's not to say the app is not popular -- Waze... [Read more]