When Chomp launched eight weeks ago in the iTunes store, it launched as an app for reviewing other iPhone apps. The app shows you a stream of realtime reviews, which you can filter by everyone or just your Facebook freinds. The app is showing some traction and should hit 300,000 active monthly users sometime tomorrow, according to co-founder Ben Keighran.

While it started out as an app, today Chomp launched a complimentary Website with full app search capabilities and links for each app. There, users can also see the stream of reviews, as well as dedicated pages for each app and vanity URLs for each reviewer. Developers can now link to the Chomp reviews directly from inside their apps using Chomp Connect, which also launched today in private beta. Chomp Connect lets developers add Chomp review buttons right inside their apps without forcing to go anywhere else.

Keighran contends that reviews on iTunes tend to have a more negative bias because people are prompted to submit a review every time they delete an app. With Chomp Connect, developers can ask their most engaged users to submit reviews.

He hopes to make Chomp a social alternative to iTunes reviews. By driving reviews straight from their apps, developers can promote their apps in the Chomp review stream. The more reviews, the more often it appears in the stream.

Crunchbase

• CHOMP
• BEN KEIGHRAN

Company: Chomp

Website: chomp.com

Funding: $2.57M

Founded in 2009 by Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards, Chomp, Inc. is the only company to enable app search based on what an app actually does. One billion apps are being downloaded every month. As the number of apps explodes, it’s become difficult for users to find the perfect app for what they want to do. Chomp’s patent-pending algorithm is able to understand what an app does and what a user wants and then makes the...

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Person: Ben Keighran

Website: benkeighran.com

Companies: Chomp, AppRedeem, 500 Startups, Milk, Teens in Tech Labs, Web FWD by Mozilla, Banjo, bluepulse, Clixtr, Aardvark

Ben Keighran is an Australian-born Internet entrepreneur currently residing in San Francisco, CA. In 2009, Keighran became CEO and Co-Founder of Chomp, the leading app search engine. At Chomp Keighran defines the product vision, corporate strategy and the customer user experience. Chomp’s search engine is based on the company’s proprietary algorithm, which learns the functions and topics of apps, so users can search based on what apps do, not just what they’re called. Since founding...

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