MyBefia is a great little site to compare Apple iPhone applications based on their rankings in the App Store. Add up to three applications (the only annoying thing is you have to look up its iTunes Store URL) and see how rank has changed over time. It also shows estimated market share, review rankings over time and popularity. The widgets are embeddable via Gigya.
Cool service! Too bad you can only do three at a time.
I’m surprised Apple is OK with this ranking going on, though, what with their strict secrecy about everything App Store.
Like Chris, I’m pretty surprised that Apple is making any of this information available. Until Apple shuts it down, I’m sure that this tool will be like crack for TechCrunchers who care about whether more users are downloading the MySpace or FaceBook apps. Personally, I could not care less.
However, it goes without saying that this “site” is in desperate need of a visual and usability overhaul. If I could search by name, I might be tempted to tinker with it a bit. I can’t stand to use iTunes any more than is absolutely necessary.
I wonder if Apple will ever release a version of iTunes that works properly with Vista, and if the current version is just as bad in Windows 7. Considering that there are probably more people using iTunes on Windows then there are Macs in the world, you’d figure it would be a priority.
Not being able to browse and buy apps over the web is kind of a pain in the ass. Researching apps is very time-consuming. I would love to see apple mirror its app catalog on their website and let Google index it, so that traversing between web reviews, web roundups and comparisons to the actually app pages and back was seamless.
Are there any sites that give us any sense of how many units have been downloaded?