It’s a discomforting fact that iPhone applications like iFart which are completely useless apps that do nothing more than help a few teenagers procrastinate are making more money than more thoughtful applications that actually solve real problems that people have, perhaps because everyone can have a bit of fun with a gag, while applications that solve specific problems like finding the best price on petrol have a smaller market. In the long term, this is toxic for development because the iPhone and any other platform with APIs for application development will be saturated with junk from people trying to make a quick buck, while useful applications are struggling to survive.

Furthermore, gag applications are easy to develop, while useful applications take more time and resources to develop, so a failed gag application incurs very little cost on a developer while a failed attempt at an otherwise good idea for a useful application can put a small business into bankruptcy.

What can we do to overcome this sad reality and actually build more applications that are useful and applications that you can be proud of? Why not raise money through gag applications and build the useful app with the revenue? That way, you’re channeling money from something that is unproductive to something much more productive. Sure you’re still contributing to the pile of junk applications out there, but at least you can feel good about it once you start using the money to develop something useful. It’s a practical compromise.

Gag apps can also be used for viral marketing of more useful apps. If you’re trying to sell a map application that locates your favourite restaurants, why not create some simple applications like “throw food to your friend” (like the super poke application in facebook, oh what a waste of time that was!), give that away for free, and place ads to your map application.

Other than the pride in creating something useful, why else would someone want to create useful apps while the risk is higher? It’s a long term investment. If something is useful, it’s going to be used many times over a long period of time, users will tell their friends about it, and it will help you establish a long term brand. Branding seems superficial, but it’s important because people are more likely to buy something if they have heard of it before. If there are users with problems and need a solution, they will pay for it, even if there is fewer people wanting it, you could be solving something for a niche market and have a monopoly for a while.

This doesn’t only apply to the iPhone(in fact, the iPhone is much more gag free than other app platorms like facebook because applications must be approved by apple before it appears in the app store), it applies to facebook, myspace, android, anything with an app API. If you aren’t prepared to limit the types of apps like apple is doing, getting developers to think about using this model is a good way to limit the amount of junk applications that can pop up …or at least it channels some of the wasted time and money spent making and using these apps into more useful things.