This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: 16apps

Quick Pitch: Personalized iPhone apps recommendations based on social media (Twitter, FriendFeed, or Last.fm) searches.

Genius Idea: Think of this as personality profiling for the App Store. The iPhone App Store has more than 65,000 apps but let's face it, iTunes is hardly the best app discovery mechanism. Enter your username for Twitter, FriendFeed or Last.fm (Facebook coming soon ... maybe) and 16apps will scan your activity for relevant meta-data that it can then use to recommend iPhone applications. Your location, topics you commonly discuss and even your conversation style influence the evaluation.

Although certainly not all-encompassing, 16apps did a pretty good job figuring me out. I was going to take exception at some of the applications associated with "cusses occasionally" — but my reaction would probably only reinforce the stereotype. By searching for keywords contained inside your Tweets or FriendFeed messages, 16apps can decipher clues about who you are and then recommend relevant applications. The Last.fm search is interesting because it show some of your most played artists. I was surprised to find out that there was actually an official Pete Yorn iPhone app. Cool.

Under each descriptor is a "featured" application and a link to a list of more apps in that related category. The list opens up directly in iTunes. 16apps has plans to offer support for the BlackBerry, Palm and Android platforms in the future. Developers can also add their apps to 16apps targeted results. I'm impressed by the algorithm 16apps is using because it doesn't appear to be stock keywords, but more of a contextual sort of search.

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