The world’s largest social network rolls out a clean, standardized App Center
Well, I didn’t see this one coming.
Facebook just announced in a blog post earlier today that its App Center will be released into the wild sometime in the near future – available on iOS, Android and the Web.
In the coming weeks, people will be able to access the App Center on the web and in the iOS and Android Facebook apps. All canvas, mobile and web apps that follow the guidelines can be listed. All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch.
When I first saw the headline, ‘Introducing the App Center,’ I was afraid there was some bad news lurking ahead… Something along the lines of now you can enjoy getting spammy Farmville notifications even more - across all your devices – with Facebook’s new App Center!
Lucky for me, it looks just the opposite – they’ve come up with an attractive interface to an arsenal of properly designed apps, all of which must meet specific guidelines and be approved by Facebook itself. Even apps with embarrassingly low user ratings will be taken down – that should help to motivate developers a little bit.
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.
I like the concept. Not that Facebook is in a shortage of users or anything – but people like me who don’t visit the site that often anymore might be encouraged to stop by more frequently to check out some apps.
In the Play store (or whatever the Android Market’s called now…), you can’t get very far before tripping over a pile of junk-apps that anyone who’s spent a couple weeks learning Java could write. As far as Apple’s App Store goes, there are some good apps in there, but most cost a lot more than they would on Android. You know.. because Apple’s so poor right now.
Anyway, Facebook’s App Center looks pretty solid. What do you think?
