Appsfire, the app recommendation engine, gets truly social with Facebook Connect.

Appsfire, if you’re not familiar, is an awesome application and site that allows you to connect with friends to find out what apps they’re using, then it allows you to give your own recommendations as well.

While Appsfire already solved the issue of having to import your applications, the social issue wasn’t so easy to overcome. However, Appsfire has just integrated Facebook Connect as a sign-in method for its Buddies page, so your social graph just became your best source for new apps.

Facebook is quite happy with the implementation, it seems. From Christian Hernandez, Head of Inernational Bussiness Development for Facebook:

“Appsfire leverages the Facebook platform in an innovative way to enable the social discovery of mobile applications. Application developers are seeking to drive distribution, and users are seeking to find new and compelling applications. We are convinced that the ability to discover applications based on what that your Facebook friends have installed on their device , will spur on a new vibrancy in the mobile developer ecosystem.”

So what does Facebook Connect bring to the Appsfire table? Here’s the list, courtesy of Appsfire:

• Appsfire helps user importing their natural social graph and discover the apps of their actual friends.
• Social is a meaningful discovery filter/context to many users who are seeking for new relevant apps.
• We believe that apps are not important enough to users to be willing to rebuild a new social graph around it. This is why this step is so critical: people only care about apps from people they know.
• We also believe most people have no idea what to search in the app store and prefer to be guided through social passive discovery. Which is what social discovery is all about.
• We’ll add other social networks in the future
• If a new user do not have any friends he can either invite them, or simply check our VIPS (celebrities with app profile)
• coming soon: a notification system when a new friend joins, integration in iPhone/iPad app

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The other side of Appsfire? It’s a developer’s dreamland. Developers can think of Appsfire as a download accelerator for their product. Exponential growth, 1.5 million clicks/month and integrated app previews are an amazing source of truly organic marketing for developers.

• AppsFire recently released AppStream for iPad (a dynamic wall of real time clicked apps) which became #2 Free App in the US (and top 10 in most countries) with over a 1/4 million downloads and over 80k daily sessions.
• Appstream has until today a sticky audience: 75k new daily sessions.
• Appsfire is becoming de facto a major destination for app discovery
• This is unexpected since AppStream was an app we created in a few days to get attention from Apple as we were not receiving Feedback on our iPhone app (appsfire 2.0)
• People love passive discovery for apps. They love fast, simple, remote ways to discover quality apps. See what someone did here :)
• coming soon: new version of Appsfire for iPhone (downloaded 30k times) with new social and innovative discovery mechanisms + promotional mechanisms for developpers