Facebook Introduces The Brand New App Centre

Facebook are a massive social networking website (as if we didn’t know!) and most definitely no stranger to making changes to the website.  These changes generally have the perception of being unpopular – possibly down to the fact that people satisfied with the changes are quite quiet whereas those dissatisfied like to make their dissenting opinion heard!

Either way, Facebook ploughs forward with changes in the name of progress and the latest change is the addition of ‘App Centre‘, which we have to say is a really great idea (in our opinion anyway!).

Remember requests?  Well they still exist, so don’t worry!  They now live in the App Centre.  Well, where’s the App Centre?  Predictably under the ‘Apps’ section of the left hand side menu (you know you’ve been wondering what that icon was for!!):

So what does the App Centre look like when you land in it?  Well, it looks like this (Yeah, we’ve got loads of outstanding requests – as per usual!):

There’s really two kinds of ‘Facebookers’.  Those who love requests and those who loathe requests.  The lovers are hanging onto their keyboard, eager for the next free Farmville animal to be gifted to them by a friend while the loathers have a constantly red clicking finger from pressing ignore on hundreds of requests.

Well, for both lovers and loathers, App Centre is a good addition!  The grouping of the same requests from different friends means that if 10 friends invite you to play the next new game, rather than having 10 individual requests from each of them to play said game, all 10 requests are now grouped as one request.  So when you accept the request, you in effect, simultaneously accept all 10 requests and you only have to visit the game once.  Excellent!

But what about for the loathers?  Well don’t worry, the grouping is good for you as well.  App Centre doesn’t help with regards to not receiving requests (that’s what blocking application requests is for!), however in the same way grouping works for lovers it works for loathers.  As similar requests are grouped, clicking the ignore button will ignore the entire group of identical requests from different friends, thereby making it easier to manage application requests.

Obviously as well the usually blocking requests by application and blocking requests from certain friends is still available.

In addition to this, the App Centre also has a run down of the top games, which ones are most popular, which ones friends are playing etc.  Think of it as a mini App Store with a few social media functions thrown in for value added content!

PS – We’ve got to admire the attention to detail as well, even though Facebook is an American company, they’ve remembered to spell ‘Center’ as ‘Centre’ for the UK version.  Bravo Facebook! :).