

Facebook launches App Center - sohamsankaran
http://newsroom.fb.com/News/App-Center-A-New-Place-to-Find-Social-Apps-175.aspx

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drivingmenuts
For some reason, I am revulsed by the idea of installing anything related to
Facebook, yet will happily install something from Apple ...

I think I might need to get my consumerism rotated.

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mjdecour
Facebook has lost it... they seem to have completely lost focus on what they
are trying to do. They just made their user experience even worse by adding
more crap.

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hdctambien
So, Facebook is going to fail because they only have Ads.

And Facebook is going to fail when they release products other than ads?

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waterlesscloud
It's to the point that there's probably a small handful of people who comment
on Facebook that are worth listening to.

The saturation point has been reached and there's very little original thought
left, just endless regurgitation of shallow "analysis".

FB will do what FB does.

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carterschonwald
Am I reasonable in finding it incredibly amusing that the example in half the
screen shots of this announcement are of pinterest?

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cldrope
You are reasonable. It's even more interesting considering the nosedive
Facebook's taking that they'd purposefully abuse the presence of another for
marketing purpose.

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arihant
"The App Center will begin rolling out to people in the U.S. today"

What is up with Facebook and US-only products? Their Camera app is not
available in most countries. Even their app for managing Pages isn't available
in my app store (they still keep showing me the annoying message to download
it). And it takes them literally order of magnitude of months (if ever) to get
their products worldwide, like with Facebook check-ins.

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frosty
You need to translate things for an international rollout which takes time.
Plus US is a known devil and easier to rollout and look at numbers to fix the
glitches.

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arihant
Sure. But that shouldn't be a reason to not launch it in India, for example. I
have never seen a non-english keyboard in my life here.

Very few countries have internationalization as a necessity. For most places,
having the app in native language is a plus, but most people still frequently
use the web in English.

I mean, Instagram could figure all the rollout challenges with a single digit
amount of people. One would expect a post-IPO company to do so too.

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halayli
Most of FB's products look cheap, and ad-oriented made for naive users. There
is a lack of design, and perfectionism.

Compare the FB page with <http://www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/>

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digitalengineer
Like Zuckerberg said: Move fast, fix later. Design is important (hell, I'm a
designer) but not the most important thing when launching. They'll improve it
later. They didn't go around buying up talented designers like SOFA for
nothing: <http://www.madebysofa.com/>

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forgottenpaswrd
" Like Zuckerberg said: Move fast, fix later."

And you will have a good enough product but never an awesome one, as "later"
never comes, and when it comes the person that created the feature is not in
the company or is not available or does not remember why he did it the way he
did it or they are cascade bugs....

This approach was used by American cars and was very good for testing
different things while the industry evolved, but when industry matured the
Japanese(and German) with the "stop the assembly line until the bug is fixed"
won.

Sometimes good enough wins, some time perfectionism does.

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digitalengineer
The car-analogy is false. Or did you get your car for free and will it be
replaced with a better car next month?

From his video: "Actually one of the core values of Facebook is is "Move
fast." And we used to write this down by saying, "Move fast and break things."
And the idea was, unless you are breaking some stuff you are not moving fast
enough. I think that's still basically true. I mean, right now, we've
optimized so much of our culture around just making it so that people can come
and build things quickly. Right, whether it's everything from having the right
tools in the right development environment to build things quickly, to nightly
code pushes, hiring the best people who have a bias towards just pushing
things very quickly, very entrepreneurial. The whole culture is tuned around
that. And I think there's probably something in that for other entrepreneurs
to learn which is that making mistakes is okay. At the end of the day, the
goal of building something is to build something not to not make mistakes."
[http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/1889-mark-zuckerberg-
moving-f...](http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/1889-mark-zuckerberg-moving-fast-
and-breaking-things)

I didn't think anyone would argue against it as it's how most startups build.
Besides software is never 'done' correct?

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sangaya
"lets you browse the apps your friends use" & "If a mobile app requires a
download, you’ll be sent to install it from the Apple App Store or Google
Play."

Are they anything more than a filter on the existing app stores based on my
friends usage? What is my motivation as a user to install their app store?

Also, I checked the Privacy settings on my Facebook account and it is not
clear how to ensure my app usage is not shared with others. Features first,
respect of users' privacy last.

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majani
Seems like a trojan horse disruption tactic to me. Playing nice at first, then
when they get some real traction, they'll reveal their true intentions.

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thefreshteapot
Near the end of the screencast they show "send to mobile".

It then appears they show you the Apple App Store.

This could lead to easier app discovery.

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kyt
Maybe this will be MySpace 2.0 after all.

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elderberry
I just realized that bar at the top of the page design meme has gotten really
popular after facebook.

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nc
It's not a meme, people copy stuff that works.

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netcan
Isn't that the definition of a meme?

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smackfu
It's a nice idea to have a common app store for all platforms. I imagine the
flow is supposed to be:

1) You friend uses Pinterest or Spotify and has a wall post from it.

2) You are interested so you follow the link to that app.

3) You follow a link to the new app store.

4) The app store provides downloads for iOS / Android / desktop / etc.

The point from Facebook's end is that step (3) would currently be a link
outside of Facebook. If they can keep that inside, better for them.

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6841iam
i think the app center could change everything for startups like YOU. facebook
gets millions of eyeballs a day. with these eyeballs fb has the power to pick
winners and losers for what appears before your eyes.

just like the itunes did for apple.

just imagine if your startup is fb's "promoted website of the week for
travel", the possibilities are endless for you.

all of this is of course moot, if fb doesn't promote their app center. as long
as they promote it, offer discounts (the way amazon does for their appstore
with their "free paid app a day", i think fb could change the way startups are
promoted on the web. (itunes already does some of this for the pure mobile
play.)

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guynamedloren
I don't get it... What is this for and why would I want to use it?

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borlak
introducing: an app store inside an app you got from an app store!

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mitjak
As silly as it seems, I think there's tremendous power in that concept. For a
lot of people Facebook is one of the few apps in use. Providing apps inside
Facebook sounds like a great way to capture the audience Apple is missing out
on.

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nshankar
<http://www.thinkezy.com/blog/?p=144>

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GuiA
Facebook phone coming in 3...2...1...

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mjdecour
I hope Facebook builds a phone, than we can really start to watch them fall.

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thatusertwo
I wish Facebook would just go away.

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chrischen
How do you get apps listed here?

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baddox
From developers.facebook.com/apps, click on one of your apps, then click Edit
Settings on the right, then click App Center on the left.

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mtgx
I don't get the point of this.

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digitalengineer
This could become bigger than Android if they curate and check the apps
beforehand. Trust is required to install apps. With Apple you know the apps
are authentic. Facebook could deliver the same 'sender ID guaranteed'
function. (And of course Facebook captures all the data as well). I expect
they'll copy Apple's GateKeeper: <http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-
lion/security.html>

