The Facebook App Center at its core is basically the Facebook version of iTunes where users can download apps that enhance their Facebook experience and customize their pages. It hasn't gotten the attention it really does deserve.
Facebook isn't clouding the Facebook App Center with everything it possibly can grab (looking at you Google Play), but has developers go through a rather complicated approval method (again, like iTunes). Once approved, Facebook allows users to download apps to their pages or play games directly on Facebook itself.
So if you take away the hardware (for example, an iPad or an iPhone), the Facebook App Center is iTunes, but this is not a problem. iTunes works fine as a content portal and is the most popular by a long shot. Social media developers and entire revolutionary apps in internet safety, social extensions, and even dragons exist here that aren't getting the time of day.
How they accomplish gaining any traction is through a more viral approach. When users interact with certain apps their activity gets recorded in a newly created component on their timeline. Brands that have found success in this approach are Klout, Pinterest, and other social media based properties.
Before the Facebook App Center, Zynga dominated this space and it seems they still hold all the records. Again, I blame this on lack of exposure which is insanely ironic considering who we're discussing here. Sadly as we all know Zynga hasn't sustained this level of performance.
The Facebook App Center even includes an entire mobile section dedicated to its own Facebook apps. A bit of hubris, sure, but convenient for those fiddling with bad clients or out of date software. Though this is a nice gesture I'd find it a bit odd that smart phones and other devices, such as tablets, wouldn't already have Facebook installed.
So what is my point in exploring the app center? Here it is:
The Facebook App Center Is Underrated
In a network with over 900 million users I find it a bit frivolous that some of the average sports games only have 90-100K active users. The App Center provides exposure, but in limited quantities as to push the publishers to buy into a Facebook Ad Campaign.
What I would like to see is Facebook advertising the App Center itself. They've started doing this on the homepage, but I'd like it to be a bit more aggressive. Check out the App Center and go on a downloading spree. You'll see the similarities to iTunes and Google Play, but the cleanliness and amount of apps will dumbfound you. How would you have heard of these prior to this article?
You wouldn't have, because as of now, the App Center is Facebook's best kept secret.