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Tag: timeline apps

  • Facebook App Center Demands Quality From Developers

    Facebook’s App Center is now live. If you live in the United States, you can access it right now. There are over 600 apps at launch and it’s just going to get bigger from here on out. To help developers who are new to this to whole App Center thing, Facebook has a few tips.

    It’s important to remember that App Center is not like iTunes or Google Play. App discovery is the name of the game here so it’s more important to present yourself well. Facebook has over 900 million users and they could all potentially see your app. Those users aren’t going to care, however, if your app page looks like trash. Making a good first impression is going to leave people liking you.

    Those likes are the most important thing to App Center. It’s even more important than the ratings in other app stores. Facebook has made it painfully clear that an app has to be made of pure quality for it to even have a chance of showing up on the front page. Of course, it’s all left up to the user and they’re a fickle bunch. Impress them and you’re going to go far, kid.

    The other great thing about App Center is that pretty much anybody can use it. If you have a Timeline, Web or mobile app, it should be on App Center. Your app page will contain links to to your app driving traffic to you while giving back traffic to Facebook as only apps that use Open Graph are allowed on the service.

    It’s probably more important to use App Center if you have a mobile app. Sure, a lot of people browse the app stores on their respective mobile devices, but they use Facebook even more. Whether they’re on the Web or on their phone, App Center will deliver content to their mobile device in no time at all.

    Before the launch of App Center, app creators had to create an app page and submit it to Facebook for approval. Now that App Center has launched, that’s not required anymore. Don’t think it lets you off the hook though. Facebook will be constantly browsing apps listed and unlisted apps to make sure they have the most up-to-date information. If your app does not meet the quality guideline, it will be delisted from App Center. If it does and you’re not on App Center, Facebook will automatically add it.

    As you can see, growth on App Center is pretty much tied to one thing – quality. Facebook only wants the best apps to appear on App Center and it makes perfect sense. You can find all sorts of trash and throwaway apps on iTunes or Google Play. Facebook wants to be the gated community of app discovery sites and the apps must reflect that.

    If you want to get on App Center, check out the documentation. It will show you how to clean up your app page and make yourself more aesthetically pleasing to users.

  • Facebook Boasts 3,000 Timeline Apps

    Facebook Boasts 3,000 Timeline Apps

    Facebook news comes by way of SXSW wherein the social networking site announced that third-party developers have taken kindly to this whole apps for timelines. In fact, the company says, nearly 3,000 apps have launched since Open Graph apps started stepping out into the Facebook world a mere two months ago.

    Foursquare, Nike, The Onion, VEVO, and Fandango are some of the latest companies to launch apps for Facebook timeline. Bolstering this newest wave of app launches, Facebook cited some app-encouraging statistics for some extant apps:

  • Pinterest grew its daily active Facebook user base by 60%.
  • Goodreads increased daily traffic by 77%.
  • Pose saw 5X growth in signups on its website and mobile app.

    • Now that apps allow users to tag locations and friends, app developers have all kinds of new ways to Facebook-ize updates from users. Here’s what you can expect from the newest wave of timeline apps:

  • Foursquare: Foursquare uses many of the new features announced last week to bring its location app to timeline. People can now add their Foursquare check-ins to their timelines and maps, share their badges and see the top places they’ve checked into.
  • Nike: The Nike+ FuelBand is becoming more social through a series of Facebook integrations. As of last week, people can use the Nike FuelBand iPhone app to find friends and see a leader board of how much Fuel they’ve earned versus their friends. Soon, people will be able to post their achievements and milestones directly to their timeline.
  • The Onion: Laugh alone no more. People can now log into TheOnion.com with their Facebook account to add The Onion content directly to their timeline and share articles and videos as they read and watch. Friends can discover articles in News Feed, and get personalized recommendations on TheOnion.com, making “America’s finest news source” more social.
  • VEVO: Vevo introduced a new integration that lets people sign into Vevo.com with their Facebook account, get personalized video playlists based on the artists they’ve liked, discover new music through friends, and post any music video from Vevo’s massive library directly to their timeline.
  • Fandango: Movie fans now have another way to bring their favorite films to their timeline. The new Fandango timeline app lets people add the clips they watch, the movies they rate and any films they want to see.
  • Viddy: Viddy, the mobile app for creating quick videos and adding filters, now lets people add clips to their timelines as they shoot. Now when people film videos from a vacation or everyday life, they can share them to Facebook and collect their clips on the Viddy app for timeline.
  • Endomondo: Endomondo brought its fitness app to timeline so people can share their workouts, progress and favorite routes with friends on Facebook. Sharing fitness activities with friends makes it easier to coordinate workouts and cheer each other on to new fitness goals.
  • RootMusic: The new RootMusic timeline app lets people mark their favorite songs and artists and the concerts they plan on attending from the Facebook Pages of bands, like The Stone Foxes. As people click “favorite”, “going to go” and “wants to go” on a RootMusic app, their picks will be added to their timeline.

    • This is likely good news for Facebook and will undoubtedly encourage more companies to launch their own timeline apps as the Facebook continues its transition from a private and person-driven site into the most spring-loaded diving board advertisers have ever enjoyed. While this is all well and fine for those companies, this means the morass you already have to wade through to find actual personal updates from your friends just got unfathomably deeper. The Onion, in a moment of brilliant introspection doubling as spot-on outward summary, sums up the impending wave of timeline apps succinctly with their invitation to dress your timeline in their own app: