App Watch: Mirror, Mirror on the iPhone, for Free

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Inner Four Inc., a Tampa, Fla., company that has 150 programs in Apple's App Store, usually devotes a couple of months to create a major app. But its biggest success so far has been one that one engineer spent just one hour on.

The ad-supported free app, called Mirror Free, is essentially a black empty screen framed by a picture frame. If a user peers closely into it, the reflection off the screen can create an effect like a mirror. By Inner Four co-founder John Swartz's own admission the app “doesn't do anything.” But the app has been a breakaway hit, dominating the top spot in the App Store's free app rankings for the better part of last week.

Mirror Free isn't the first joke app to become popular on the App Store. In the past, apps like iBeer, in which users can brew and drink a virtual glass of beer, and iFart, which does what one might expect, have taken the spotlight, spawning many copycat apps. But most perform some kind of function and many of the original apps are creative, catching users' imagination in some way.

Inner Four

Inner Four's Mirror Free iPhone App.

Which makes it all the more mysterious why this app has become such a big hit. The company spent no effort on marketing, and the app's average customer rating is one-and-a-half stars. Even inside the company, the developer who created the app has become the butt of jokes. Its description on the App Store actively discourages users from downloading it, saying “Honestly, don't download this. It is just a blank screen with a frame.”

Swartz says he came up with the idea after he bought a similar mirror app, developed by another company, for 99 cents. He says he felt cheated by the app and thought it unfair that people should have to pay for that. So he decided to introduce some competition.

The irony of the app's success isn't lost on Swartz, 40, who used to run a software training company called Boson before he sold it. The bulk of Tampa Bay, Fla.-based Inner Four's apps, which span the education, finance, entertainment and games categories, are paid apps “that make a little bit of money each day.”

Mirror Free had a technical glitch that prevented it from making money off of the ads for a few days, but AdWhirl, the ad network firm that Inner Four used, said users were clicking on ads on Mirror Free at a surprisingly high rate. Now that the problem has been fixed, AdWhirl's co-founder Sam Yam says the app could generate as much as $2,000 a day in ad revenue. “Maybe because there's no use for the application, they click on the ads,” says Swartz.