Facebook App Center launches: New social store-front for apps

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facebook-app-centre.pngFacebook are preparing to launch App Center, their new app store-front that will deliver apps to the social network’s users no matter whether or not they are iOS or Android device owners.

The App Center will be used primarily to promote apps that integrate with the social network such as Spotify or Pinterest, with its own ranking system that sees leaderboards populated based on usage patterns, not just sales. It’s not just enough to sell lots of copies of an app to hit the top ranking spots in the App Center; Facebook users will have to be using them regularly too. This way, it’ll be easy to see what are truly the most popular apps among your Facebook friends.

The App Center will also encourage developers to make apps for Facebook.com too, with Facebook taking a 30% cut of any sale price. Apps for other platforms will simply have a link to their respective stores attached, with Facebook not taking a cut.

“For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga,” said Facebook engineer Aaron Brady on the Facebook blog.

“Everything has an app detail page, which helps people see what makes an app unique and lets them install it before going to an app.

“Success through the App Centre is tied to the quality of an app. We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Centre. To help you [developers] monitor user feedback, we are also introducing a new app ratings metric in Insights to report how users rate your app over time.

“Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won’t be listed.”

Now if they could only sort out their own super-buggy iPad app…

Gerald Lynch
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