After U.S. and U.K users had seen it recently appearing in their accounts, on Monday Facebook announced the launch of its new App Center portal to the users in English-speaking countries.
The company also introduced a new translation tool to help broadening the number of apps submitted worldwide, reported TNW.com.
App Center is now live in the following countries: Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, United States, and the United Kingdom. It is available via desktop, smartphone, and tablet devices.
The company initially unveiled the App Center in June with 600 apps and said at the time it had planned to conduct a phased roll out. The apps included Nike+ GPS, Ubisoft Ghost Recon Commander, Stitcher Radio, Draw Something, and Pinterest.
On Monday Facebook said that since the launch, App Center had “helped millions of people discover new mobile and web apps.”
It also said in a statement via PCMag.com, “People in these countries will now see the App Center bookmark on the left side of their home page on Facebook.com and in the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.”
Localized Apps Now Available
After seeing that 80 percent of its users came from outside the US and Canada, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) started accepting developers’ submissions for localized apps for the App Center on Monday. It will provide tools for the developers, enabling an easier way to make the apps available for worldwide use.
In addition, a new Localize tab has been added to the App Dashboard. This will translate an app’s information such as name, tagline, and descriptions for input; it can be used across Facebook.
With the thousand of Facebook applications, the new App Center will attempt to do easier both, navigation and utilization. Categories include a timeline, mobile, and web app categories with divisions for the activities of games, travel, sport, music and news, according to TNW.
So why was an App Center introduced? Facebook has said that the traffic from it “produces better than average revenue per user for its games.” War Commander and Battle Pirates have seen large increases in it users. Additional users have also flocked to Disney’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance, in which Facebook gamers are very engaged in.
Company looks for the app marketplace to expand to Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkey users in the upcoming weeks. Developers will need to have apps submitted by July 13, 2012 for use in these countries. More details about this can be found on the company’s blog.
