Before search engines were invented there were these things called internet directories. Think of them as websites with an endless stream of links meticulously categorized by people who were paid to judge and sort all the websites that were being created during the mid to late 1990s. We all know where this story goes, at some point the internet became mainstream, websites were popping up like weeds, and Google invented a way to rank websites using algorithms instead people. But focusing our attention back to directories, there were many of them, some specializing in one particular niche, but if you wanted the biggest, baddest directory on the planet, you pointed your browser to Yahoo!’s homepage. Apps today are like where the internet was back in the early days. You may think over 425,000 applications is a lot, but it really isn’t, and keeping track of the new ones isn’t that difficult if you hire enough people.
Enter Yahoo! AppSpot, an application you can install on both iOS and Android devices that will help you find additional applications you may be interested in. Instead of serving you the entire application catalogs that Apple and Google offer, they say that their app “works like a flashlight in the darkness” to help you find the cream of the crop. In other words, Yahoo! has turned the clocks back 15 years and are now doing what they do best: sorting. There’s no business model, there are no ads, as far as we can tell, so we’re not sure what Yahoo!’s goal is. Do they want to resuscitate their brand? Do they want to prove that they’ve still got it? Will anyone care?
We admit, finding new apps is often difficult, but just ask your friends or read websites dedicated to reviewing mobile apps. If you’ve found anything interesting lately then let us know in the comments, we might want to review it!