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Human Curation for Apps

In his look at human curation in the age of algorithms following the launch of Apple Music, Jean-Louis Gassée makes an interesting point about the App Store:

For a while now, music downloads have paled when compared to apps – hence Apple’s move to a streaming service. But there’s another idea lurking in there: If it’s a good idea to use human curators to navigate 30 million “songs”, how about applying human curation to help the customer find his or her way through the 1.5M apps in the Apple App Store? Apple bought Beats for $3B and spent a good chunk more to build its Music product. Why not take another look at the App Store jungle and make customers and developers even happier?

Apple has been featuring curated collections of apps on the App Store for a few years now, notably revamping the front page with best new apps, games, updates, and handpicked sections over the past year.

But I do wonder what a “For You” curated and personalized front page would be like for apps. I’m not sure 1.5 million apps have the cultural and social heritage that sustains the curation efforts of Apple Music, but it’s fun to imagine how app experts and design tastemakers could make the App Store even more personal, showcasing great software that usually doesn’t make it to the top charts.