Sharing what mobile apps you have in a social network has been tried various ways. Appsfire hit on the idea of socialising apps.
Zwapp is coming at it from a slightly different angle. Its iPhone app (iTunes link) auto-discovers what apps you have on your iPhone and connects up your contacts, Facebook and Twitter friends. You then follow people who’s opinion’s you respect when it comes to apps. It even has a live feed where you can see what apps your friends are using and downloading (privacy is now most definitely over it would seem).
Of course what Zwapp is is a social interface to the iPhone app store – something the store itself lacks. It will also soon be fully funtional on the web as well, here’s an example.
As Zwapp’s Alexander van Elsas says “we’re try to make the app store small again” – in other words, discovery is broken on a store with millions of apps, so it makes sense to bring it back to a place where you can find the best apps your friends use. Considering you can also rate and review apps from within Zwapp, this should proide a far more useful social layer than Apple’s own iTunes.
Business model-wise, Zwapp gets a referral fee when someone downloads an app from one of their links. Eventually they should have data for apps publishers which should be pretty valuable.
Here’s an interview with Zwapp’s van Elsas, recorded at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam.