Over the holidays, the iOS device user base surely grew to new heights with many gifted new iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. With the growing App Store, it is important for new iOS device users to know which of the many applications are right for them. We have been pointed to AppHero’s free iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch application, which uses multiple methods to recommend App Store applications to its users. We spoke to AppHero’s Jordan Satok who explained that AppHero primarily uses a user’s Facebook and Twitter data in order to serve application recommendations.
AppHero uses your Facebook data such as things that you have “Liked.” For example, if you liked a set of sports teams, TV shows, movies, or places, AppHero can use this information to recommend applications related to your favorite sports teams, TV programs, and apps that are region-specific to places you “liked” or have been to. Of course, access to your Facebook information must be explicitly approved by you. Satok assures that this is done securely and that only information relevant to creating application recommendations is scanned.
“Everyone has different songs on their iPod, different movies in their movie collection, different books on their bookshelf, but because discovering apps is so difficult, most people just have the most obvious and generic apps, and that’s sort of crazy to us,” Satok told us.
Like with Facebook, AppHero is able to scan through your public Twitter tweets in order to find applications pertaining to your interests. For instance, if you actively tweet about a certain sports team, it is likely that AppHero will recommend applications pertaining to that team.
Another important aspect of AppHero is how quickly its scanning engine functions. Additionally, Satok tells us that the application’s simple user-interface was built with a mainstream user base in mind.
AppHero’s personalized recommendations also improve as the application is used. Additionally, the application has features that allow you to easily recommend applications to friends.
