Snowcrashing

The Hottest Apps…Are Now On (Apps)Fire

Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci in Mobile Stores

Remember when people used to compare their phones by the tech specs? Pixels for the camera, MP3 player, etc? Luckily that’s not the case anymore: today no one cares of the hardware (sure the hard-core geeks will always do…), what makes the difference is the software: the services and the content. Alas in 2009 lingo: the APPS.

The numbers are impressive: 65,000 apps on the App Store in less than a year. Still something is wrong with the user experience: the discovery process. Once you download an app, it sits there and you might as well forget why you downloaded it. The App Store experience is autistic and often times apps are used for as much as one time…

So welcome to Appsfire, a über-app with one mission: helping you share your apps and discover new ones. To be clear, you do not really share the apps themselves, but the names of the ones you select. Your friends will see your list and have one-click access to download them, from the App Store.

In order for the app to work, you have to install it on your machine first, so that it can scan and index your iTunes backup file. And then you’re ready for sharing. The reason of this extra-step is explained by AppsFire on their blog: Basically Apple does not let you read what’s on your iPhone. Each app has its own sandbox and except maybe the contact book, no app can communicate with another app making the listing of your own apps impossible from the iPhone.

Peace&Love to Apple and its limitations…

So here’s how the app works.

1) Download AppsFire on your machine

2- (optional) Select the apps you want to share and choose your favorite network: Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, widget, link. (In my case Facebook didn’t work …but the app is still in beta so a few kinks are still being ironed out. Other technical limitations as the indexing are well known also - not all the apps, even some famous ones, are yet recognized by the AppsFire engine). [Update: please make sure you download the latest Appsfire version, which should be able to view all your apps].

3) Download the App on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app will let you share your apps via email in a rather smooth way. Or you can discover new ones. The options are Top Downloaded Apps, Top Apps in Your Area and Apps from a few Internet celebs: Loic Le Meur, Corvida, Louis Gray, etc.

Overall kudos to AppsFire for their job.  A few thoughts:

-Reviews: being able to review the app a friend recommends,before being kicked out of Appsfire into the AppStore, should be a priority.

-Sharing- It would be nice to have Facebook Connect  in order to make the sharing a smoother user experience.

-Multiple Bundles & Alerts- Why not allowing various bundles for each user so that the sharing could be more targeted? like My Idiot Apps, My Useless/Useful Apps, My MustHaves etc. Additionaly, I’d like to see an option to send a simple alert to my friends if I add an app to one of the bundles that has already being shared.

-Friends Feedback – Why not letting your friends acknowledge that they liked the apps you shared with some sort of feedback mechanism (Apps Downloaded by XX friends or App Liked/Hated by XX friends).

We’re just in the infancy of the app store “revolution”. So it’s nice to see some innovation popping up. Once AppsFire will be ready for prime time, there will be infinite ways to make it a money maker. From the usual suspect (affiliate links) to analytics, the most valuable one: what are people most shared apps by geo-location or demo (via Facebook), what are the most frequent bundles, super- sharing options for business accounts (e.g upload of email lists, etc).

For now, go get yourself some (Apps)fire!

Tags: App Discovery, Mobile Stores