Facebook has announced the App Center, a new way to find apps with Facebook integration in a single place. Before now, there was never a good way to discover quality Facebook apps, whether they were housed on Facebook or utilized some of its APIs elsewhere. Facebook is aiming to change that.
The App Center will include any mobile apps, web apps, and “canvas” apps, which are the applications right on facebook.com so long as they follow Facebook’s developer guidelines. The mobile version of App Center won’t provide access to any of the web or canvas apps for obvious reasons. To address paid apps, Facebook is launching a beta program today to give developers the option for in-app purchases.
Maybe I’m a little biased being here at IntoMobile, but I’m thinking the mobile App Center will be the most purposeful. After all, that’s where all the apps are booming nowadays — Draw Something, Viddy, Spotify, Pinterest, etc. The App Center will be way smaller than Google Play or the App Store because it essentially just acts as a filter to display only apps with Facebook. Smaller is better though because Facebook might be able to surface some of its apps worthy of attention, but which lost the fight for popularity among hundreds of thousands of other mobile apps.
The App Center will go live on Facebook and in Facebook’s iOS and Android apps in a few weeks. Meanwhile, developers are encouraged to update their apps before the launch to ensure they can participate.