Yahoo Adds Mobile App to Find Other Mobile Apps
An app to find lots of other apps? Yep, there’s an app for that.
Actually, there are lots of apps claiming to help sort through the morass of hundreds of thousands of other apps. As of tonight, there is one more.
Yahoo is introducing Yahoo AppSpot — a program the company discribes as a “fun, fast way to search and discover” mobile programs for the iPhone and for Android-based devices.
“Yahoo! AppSpot, a new mobile application, works like a flashlight in the darkness of more than 425,000-plus apps in the Apple App Store and 200,000 apps in Android Market,” Yahoo said in a statement. “Yahoo! AppSpot offers a new way to take the guesswork out of finding relevant and interesting apps for mobile users.”
The app includes personal picks updated daily, related apps and other features, followed by a direct link to the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace once users have found the app they want.
In addition to the mobile apps, Yahoo is also adding a PC-based app discovery feature. Once people find an app they want via the browser, they can either use their phone’s camera to scan a bar code on the screen or have a link sent to the phone via text message.
Yahoo is, of course, only the latest company to enter the increasingly crowded app discovery market, lured by the popularity of mobile programs and the fact their developers are willing to spend a lot on advertising to help stand out from the pack. The field includes start-ups like GetJar and Appia as well as big names such as Amazon.