Microsoft reconsiders WP7 app rejection

01.04.2011
Microsoft appears to be reconsidering a decision to bar an application from the Windows Phone 7 market, in one of the first tests of the software giant's mobile app approval process.

that after Microsoft approved the app in mid-March, the company this week asked him to make onerous changes or pull the application from the market.

Imagewind displays in real time images that people post on Twitter using tools like Twitpic.

After submitting an update to the application, Roger Peters, the developer, received a note from Microsoft this week asking him to filter the content. "While the images shown are dynamic, per your app's disclaimer, a portion of the images' content is too graphic for the app to be permissible in Marketplace. In order to be permissible, there would need to be a content filter before surfacing images since users are not querying a specific type of image and are rather pushed to them," according to the note signed by the Windows Phone Marketplace Policy team.

"Given this, we ask that you unpublish your app within one business day until you are able to modify your application to comply with the certification guidelines," the note said.

Filtering the images isn't possible, Peters said. "Since Imagewind is entirely based on live unfiltered images from Twitter, there is no chance of me ever being able to comply with the policy team's request short of hiring a team to monitor and filter images 24/7. This rejection draws the line in the sand for what is and isn't allowed on Windows Phone, and it paints a distinct difference between what is allowed in the iPhone app store and the WP7 marketplace," he wrote in a blog post about the matter on Wednesday.