Spam Continues in the Marketplace, Microsoft Looking for Certification Product Manager to Help

When will Microsoft ever learn? Courtesy of our friend Cris Rowlands, it appears the Windows Phone Marketplace is still being assaulted left and right by spam apps. What you see above is 14 of the 36 apps that have been published to the Marketplace in the last four days by developer Mark Agholor. Like many of the spam apps we have reported on, Mark Agholor's university and sports team news apps are nothing more than glorified RSS readers that could easily have been consolidated into a single app. To make matters worse, this is what all of them look like:

So the taking initiative Microsoft promised to do in order to fix their "bulk publishing" woes doesn't appear to have worked, even if they had bothered trying. But let's not be too harsh on them, because we've discovered that Microsoft probably is trying to solve this issue. We spotted a new open position at the Microsoft Careers site titled "Product Manager, Windows Phone Marketplace Policy" and the description sounds like the Seattle campus is actively looking for somebody to lead the charge on their certification process (we've picked out the relevant bits):

Key responsibilities include:
- Run the Marketplace application and content policy certification process to ensure all published apps are compliant with the program policies
[...]
- Own, evolve and refine application and content policies over time
- Periodically revise application and content policies, in order to adapt to new business requirements and reduce developer friction
[...]
- Manage the Marketplace application take-down process to promptly remove apps from the catalog that violate program policies, infringe on other people’s IP or threaten the security of Windows Phone devices or users
- Partner with engineering teams to evolve and optimize the application certification workflow as we expand to more markets, languages, operators and device manufacturers

We're very intrigued to see that Microsoft may be taking two different approaches to the Marketplace certification control. It appears that they are both tightening up the initial certification process as well as the "application take-down process" in order to pull apps that shouldn't have made it into the store in the first place.

So what say you, Windows Phone faithful: should Microsoft take this approach if that really is what the job post is implying? How do you feel about "bulk publishing" of apps in general?

Via: Twitter (@CrisRowlands)
Source: Mark Agholor (WP7Applist), Microsoft Careers