Getting Social

My hope is that Apple, and every other app store, can take a page from the last decade of the social web. Give its users a public identity, an incentive to share what they love, and the ability to find and follow others like them.

Mockup: Finding friends from Twitter. Apologies to Foursquare.

Find Friends

Bootstrap the social graph using iOS’s Twitter, Facebook, and address book integration, letting users find and follow users that recommend apps they like.

Like Twitter, these should be relationships where you can follow someone, without requiring approval the way friending people on Facebook does.

It’s not just about friends, but about following people, developers, or organizations that are finding and curating stuff you like.

Public Profiles

There’s an inherent expectation that app purchases are private, so automatically sharing that activity would be a massive privacy violation.

Instead, aggregate reviews and ratings on a public profile page. Add a simple, lightweight way to favorite apps, rather than requiring star reviews and purchases.

Each profile should have a “Follow” button and follower count, and apps you’ve favorited or reviewed appear on your profile, letting individuals or companies curate apps they love for their followers.

Likewise, every App Store developer should have a profile, listing the apps they’ve published and giving their fans a chance to be immediately notified when new apps are released.

Discovery

Mockup: Timeline of recent activity from people you follow

Finally, with the social graph in place, it would be possible to replace the “Near Me” section of the App Store with something relevant and personalized—a timeline view of shared apps, reviews, and ratings from people you follow.

Alternate views could show trending or popular apps from people you follow.

Push notifications could announce trending apps from people you follow, or alert you when a developer you follow has released a new app.