Yes. We heard about Facebook app center. We read the news. But a lot of critical information and questions have been ignored. So we’re going to ask and lay out a few points here:
- Facebook app center is NOT an app store: an app store means hosting apps, enabling delivery/download and transaction. Facebook App Center is a layer pointing to App Store apps
- App center ships with 600 apps “only”: how many are native mobile apps vs. actual Facebook web apps? There are tens of thousands of mobile apps using Facebook as a login. Why are they not listed?
- Facebook is said to point 83 million users in last month to the app store: unique users? from which country? what is the ratio? There is no one app store but 123 app stores. What is the split between those countries? [Appsfire sends over 5 million visits a month]
- No Apple is not highly dependent on Facebook for downloads and usage: it is a driver but not a critical one yet. The iTunes App Store generates over 2 billion downloads a quarter… Facebook [for now] is a drop of water in the ocean
- The App center launched as a directory: where is search?
- The App center is social driven: where are the faces?
- The App center is missing one more critical element of any apps: PRICE. Actually 2 more critical elements are missing, but we ll keep this for later….
- PC/Mobile experience: send to mobile only sends you back to Facebook app, in the notification center. Not to the app. Why break the experience?
There is so much that could make the App Center much better. The most important part of an app store is to help users make decisions on what to download.
Right now we don’t feel the App Center is much better than the native app stores themselves for discovery. In many ways it is worse.
Let’s see what happens…
