Om Malik:
Facebook says it is launching an app store that will allow people to get access to social apps on the network, without much heavy lifting. The company made the announcement in a blog post today. The company is hoping that the new app store will make it easy for apps to be discovered on the platform.
Oh great, just what we need.
Generally I would agree but I want to hear more about what they are thinking. If this is just for web versions of apps that are already using Facebook to log in (like Bejeweled Blitz) so you can play them via your Facebook page, okay whatever.
but if they are thinking they can ‘store’ actual iOS apps they will be shot down by Apple rather fast. The only way Facebook could pull that off is either to go the Cydia style route which would probably result in Apple banning using Facebook APIs for logging in for official iOS apps, or by merely referring folks to the actual official app store and perhaps collecting a reference fee. which might not be a bad move for Facebook or the apps since it could improve visibility for some titles if folks were talking about them in their time line (and Facebook had a way to generate the reference links on the fly)