Undiscovered Apps

Wow - time really flies. Apple's iPhone App Store is one year old already! (Happy Birthday, BTW). 50,000 apps later.... but can you find the app you want?! Well... yes and no.

You see - if the app you're looking for is in one of the 'top' lists, or is maybe featured in the 'What's hot' or 'Staff favorites' section in iTunes, then you're golden. But what happens to all the other tens of thousands of other apps that are languishing below the radar? How do they get noticed?

There are loads of iPhone-related websites around which are a fantastic resource to us iPhone and iPod-touch users. I love browsing them just to get the skinny on new app releases, etc. but one of the things I've noticed over time is that they generally tend to only show you (or review) the top sellers or big hitters!

So how do we get to know about the other, fantastic apps that we know are in the Store? I mean, there are thousands and thousands of talented devs out there producing some great stuff, right?! - but if they don't have the marketing muscle, their hard work very quickly disappears like a needle in one big-ass haystack of an App Store.

Well, now... There's an App for that. Sorry - I just had to get that line in somewhere :o)

A couple of months back, I released Top-Tens (App Store Link). Top-Tens allows you to keep tabs on your favorite top 10 lists - for example, top 10 movies, top 10 books - even top 10 Disney rides and attractions, (since we're in holiday season). There are currently around 80 different top 10s which you can keep tabs on - and they get updated daily (or more frequently where necessary) . And the list is growing, too!

So - I thought... wouldn't it be great to do a Top 10 Undiscovered Apps category? This would showcase apps which users thought were great - but, crucially, were not listed in the top 100 of the various lists in iTunes. Well... if it's in one of the 'top' lists in iTunes, then it's not exactly undiscovered, is it!?

Obviously, for this to work, I need users to suggest these Apps to me. You can do this here. Simply type in the app name and category and hit submit. All submissions are collated and the most popular are then made visible in the Top 10 Undiscovered Apps section in the Top-Tens app. Simple, really!

So what are you waiting for!? Lets put those gems on the map!

Rod.