Horoscope Review: Facebook and Twitter's Biggest Horoscope App, Mobile Version

Icon for dailyhoroscopes.net, source of Facebook horoscopes, Twitter Tweetscopes and and the "Horoscopes" mobile app.

This Smartphone App Freezes Solid --a Lot

Both Facebook and Twitter have popular Sun-Sign horoscope feeds from the source www.dailyhoroscopes.net, and its free mobile app is called “Horoscopes." Its icon is a glowing pink moon and four stars corralled in a magenta square. It's available for iPhone and iPad and Android Market counts 100,000 downloads, with 4163 users rating it 4.3 out of 5. Users love the app’s colorful bar graph displaying the “percentages” of astrological mojo on tap for the day in the areas of Love, Work, Creativity, Intellect, Wellness, and so on.

Because we all sense that this will be a crucial year, if you’re into horoscopes, an easy-to-use and authentic mobile horoscope app would be a great companion. Many apps are competing for your loyalty. Let's see if this is the one for you.

After downloading the app and opening it, you are asked to select your Sun sign, gender, and geographical region. A button at the upper left lets you choose from eight Sun-sign icons. A choice of Sun-sign icons is a small thing, but it’s like a tattoo: If you see it daily, it’s best if you really like it. Gender and geographical region don't factor in this horoscope's content — guys and girls everywhere sharing the same sign get the same ‘scope — so the request for this info must be solely for data collection.

We are all used to having personal data collected for marketing purposes, but requesting gender and locale for no astrological reason made me want to check the privacy policy at www.dailyhoroscopes.net, registered in California. It claims it will “never sell” any user info, saying “We believe that no other horoscope website has a privacy policy this solid.” Yet strangely enough the privacy policy described is not for www.dailyhoroscopes.net but www.daily-horoscopes.net, a URL registered in Belgium that has no website. Either the dailyhoroscopes.net legal team is too careless to proofread or is very sneaky. And you don’t need Judge Judy to explain that even if they don’t “sell” user info they can rent it, as most do, or give it away. For clarification I emailed the “General enquires” (sic) contact at its bizarre address, contact@R-E-M-O-V-E-T-H-I-S-dailyhoroscopes.net. The email bounced back. This implied that dailyhoroscopes.net doesn’t care to answer user concerns. Of course their horoscope is free, but that shouldn't mean no customer service.

How to Lose Trust in a Horoscope App....

When I selected my Sun sign icon (not entering gender or geographical area), both of the screen’s “Save” buttons — top and bottom — didn’t work. About half the times I used it, this app froze solid or said “ERROR: Unable to download data. Try again later.” This screen said, “Tap to report this problem,” and I tapped, but the email form had no address. As the weirdness piled up I lost trust in this horoscope.

Anyway — after it’s set up, “Horoscope” will show scopes for Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, a feature I always like. “Tap here for more horoscope apps” brings up the daily “love horoscope” app (its icon, a lacy red heart in a white square), and work horoscope (same crescent moon as “Horoscope,” but in green). These apps must be downloaded separately. I prefer apps with built-in lovescopes: Who has time to read three separate daily-horoscope apps? At the dailyhorsocopes.net website you can get your sign's day scope plus lovescope all at once on a single page.

My Dec. 13 scope predicted “a wasteful day,” and it was: a 3.5 hour electrical outage ruined my plans. On Dec. 21 my fortune said: “There’s also a big emphasis on friends and exchanges of ideas today,” and that too was true. The same day it told my Virgo friend to focus on “relationships today and this will quite likely be reciprocated by anyone you choose to shower your affection upon this weekend.” She had plastic surgery that day and won’t be able to shower anything this weekend. Fortunately on surgery day her “Wellness” score was 80 percent, while her work score was 1 percent (of course she took that day off).

What made me uninstall this app was discovering that it recycles horoscopes wholesale. The Dec. 22 Sagittarius scope said:

“For the person who has everything, it could be a hard job trying to work out what to buy. Take into account the special needs of someone older than yourself when considering a residential move. You need to thoroughly concentrate on an intricate problem if you want good and immediate results”. Wellness: 47% Love: 90% Money: 12%"

That sounded okay, very like the holidays — but a casual google revealed that the Aquarius horoscope for the past June 22 was identical, including the percentages: http://www.facebook.com/aquariushoroscope/posts/10150204494315373. Now, astrological aspects can and do recur — but in the sky, as in life, no two days are ever the same. Wholly recycled forecasts AND percentages mean this mobile app and the related Facebook app and Twitter Tweetscopes are all cynically computerized and the source is hoping you'll never notice.

So I don’t recommend this horoscope app. Until I find the perfect companion app, I’d rather use this other one from ID Mobile SA or the AstrologyZone app from Phunware.