Yes, that title is laughably buzzwordy.
You may not have used App.net yourself, but you’ve almost certainly come across one of their sites: the startup makes it easy for mobile developers to build attractive, informative splash pages. In other words, it helps them establish a web presence and build SEO — things that are often surprisingly neglected by mobile app developers, who are understandably more concerned about where they’re appearing on the App Store and Android Market rankings. You can check out Evernote’s App.net page as an example right here.
Today, App.net is adding another feature to its suite of products: it’s making it easy for mobile developers to establish a good presence for their apps on Facebook. CEO Dalton Caldwell points out that many developers with major mobile apps don’t do a particularly good job promoting their mobile apps from their Facebook pages.
The Facebook application is pretty straightforward: developers can present a carousel of screenshots of their app, and there’s a field at the bottom of the page that lets users send a link to the app directly to their phone. There are a handful of other options (seen below), including the option to enable ‘Like-Gating’ (which means that users must ‘Like’ you on Facebook before they can view the details about the mobile app). Like Gating can be annoying for users, but it gives brands (and, in this cases, apps) a long-term communication channel with each user.
Launch partners for the app include Billboard, The Muppets, Vevo, and MyPad.
Caldwell says that App.net won’t be charging extra for the new feature — it will be included under its current pricing, which has a free (limited) option and a standard option beginning at $12 a month.
