Facebook App Center goes live for mobile users

Facebook officially launched its App Center this week, amid a smattering of good news from Wall Street. 

|
Reuters
The Facebook homepage.

Earlier this week, Facebook took the wraps off the App Center, an online store in the mold of the Apple App Store or Google Play. App Center launches with approximately 600 applications, including software from Pinterest, Draw Something, Nike, and game company Ubisoft, which is offering a mobile Facebook version of its popular Ghost Recon franchise. The platform is accessible now through iOS or Android-equipped devices. 

So how does it stack up? Well, over at PC World, Ian Paul notes that App Center isn't necessarily a replacement for other app stores, but a kind of funnel. Using the platform, you can find games to play on Facebook.com, track down iOS or Android apps that require a Facebook log-in, or filter through game and app requests. And in those ways, Paul continues, the App Center will almost certainly be a success for users. 

"App Center may be able to surface some good content for you since Facebook knows so much about your preferences and can share with you which apps your friends are using," he writes.

The App Center may also be a success for Facebook, which went public last month. The App Center, after all, does what Facebook products do best: keeps users connected to the larger Facebook eco-system. "Facebook is clearly hoping that it can use its strength to increase the popularity of apps that use Facebook in some way, which increases Facebook’s popularity, and so on in a positive feedback loop," writes Dieter Bohn of The Verge. 

In related news, after weeks of bad news from Wall Street, Facebook stock crept upward today. The Associated Press reports that shares of the social network climbed 73 cents in trading on Friday, up to $27.04. That's still 29 percent off the initial offering price of $38, but probably a welcome reprieve for CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the Menlo Park crew. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Facebook App Center goes live for mobile users
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/0608/Facebook-App-Center-goes-live-for-mobile-users
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe