Facebook has launched an App Center (Beta) that centralizes existing apps and allows app developers to publish new ones to over half a billion users. Think Apple App Store or Google Play.
App Center will also offer an iOS app, using a layout comparable to Apple’s App Store.
Successful ecosystems can be big wins for the platform, developers, brands and users. Facebook must recognize this, because for the first time, Facebook is also allowing developers to charge for their apps, encouraging better quality and diversity.
Apps like Draw Something, that bake in social interactions have found great success. I believe Facebook could have a very strong ecosystem and this is a great step toward that.
In this beta phase, developers can create and lay out their app’s detail page within the App Center (see example above) using predetermined guidelines. If you’re really fast and submit a finished layout before May 18, your app will be listed with higher priority when App Center launches. The submitted apps are checked and controlled with fixed quality perceptions in mind, and if they get approved, they’ll be available at the initial launch of App Center — Facebook didn’t specify a fixed launch date though.
Additionally, there’s a new feature added to their statistics app Insights: it’s a user feedback monitoring tool that uses a new, visual app ratings metric (see image below).
Anxious to get started? Visit the new App Center tab on the developer website to create your app’s detail page.
