Facebook Introducing the App Center

Facebook has announced its new feature “App Center” on Wednesday. Facebook says ‘The target is to offer a center point for over 900 million users to find great social apps. It will be another channel to increase the growth for Apps on Facebook, Mobile Apps, and Websites that use Facebook Connect for the login processes.

You would need to follow the guidelines Facebook has set forth in order to add your application in the list of the App Center’s applications. Your app would be reviewed by Facebook for the user experience, images and app details page. If rejected, Facebook would be providing you complete information for the reason and also providing you suggestions for resolving the issue. You would be able to re-submit your app to be a part of App Center, after resolving all the issues.

According to a Facebook’s spokeswoman (Malorie Lucich), “Facebook’s app center is designed to push the best social apps through a personalized discovery page (App Details Page).” She also added to a question about the Facebook competing the Apple’s app store or Google’s play that “We’re certainly not looking at it any competitive way with Google or Apple”.

The authorization for users in App Center would be handled by App Details Page, before they arrive on the website, but it is important to make sure that the users should land on a personalized screen after clicking through the App Center. The important thing to take into consideration is that the same set of permissions is asked from the users, when a user tries to access the application by typing a URL or by clicking through the App Center. If the permissions asked are different, the user would end up seeing two authorization prompts in a row, which is confusing and at the same time a bad user experience. This might also prevent your application to be listed in the App Center.

The general perception of most of the people are that Facebook is trying to compete with Apple and Google app stores with its newly launched App Center. But, what most of the people do not see is that, on Facebook’s App Center, the search results would be displaying the applications irrespective of the platform. So, if the application is from Apple’s app store or Google’s play, the user would be redirected to the particular store to download or purchase the application.

With the launch of App Center, Facebook would also be allowing the developers to offer paid apps, so that developers can charge a flat fee from users to use an application. With over 900 million users on Facebook, it is certain that there would be a number of developers who would be willing to create apps for a charge. However, to control the quality of the applications, Facebook has provided the guidelines to developers and would review the application before including the app in the list of App Center.

Facebook’s app center is a great initiative which is good for social app builders. It would be easier to get the social apps popular on Facebook as compared to other stores, as this would imply that they would not be competing with the non-networked apps. The app center majorly focuses on the mobile apps as the mobile app developers would be willing to grab the attention of the 900 million potential users available on Facebook.

CONCLUSION:

In our opinion, Apple and Google might not need to worry about the launch of Facebook’s App Center, and also should not think of it as a competition, as this is one other way that their apps can be promoted. The good news is Facebook’s App Center would be monitored and only those apps which meet the certain guidelines and benchmark (set forth by Facebook) would be listed on the App Center. We think the users would be in for a treat and would be satisfied to use the applications available on the App Center. We would certainly like your opinions or thoughts on the launch of Facebook App Center.