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Web Developers need a Web App Store. Has this been attempted before?
3 points by joshontheweb on Jan 19, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments
I wrote in the comments of another post about this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484928. It was a bit off-topic so I'm expounding on it here.

I wish there was an app store for web apps. The web needs easy way to sell access to web apps like in the app store. If all I had to do was click 'purchase' and enter my password to get access to web apps like turntable.fm for a reasonable price, I would gladly pay. This would open up a whole new revenue model for web apps. There is a whole class of web apps that are trying to rely on ads now but don't have the millions of visitors a month to make that feasible. A web app store could provide a place for these lower traffic but still very useful and relevant products. I envy mobile developers since they have this avenue as an option. Who could pull this off? You need the database with everyones credit cards like Amazon or Paypal. Anyone else feel this way?



No, thanks.

But yes, it exists: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home


I have been to the chrome webstore but I don't see a way to buy anything. Can you charge for an app on it? Is there an api that you can use to process payments if they go directly to your url?


Yes, you can charge: http://code.google.com/chrome/webstore/docs/index.html


Another problem with chrome web app store is that you have to use chrome. That is not good enough. A huge slice of the market is needlessly left behind.


Thanks for the comment and link but, out of curiosity, why not?


This creates another middlemen, which, once become big, can dictate their rules. We're better off with the current distributed nature of Web.


I guess we became too spoiled with the freemium model for that to work. The problem I have is reaching the audience with my project since I come from Slovenia I can't get it out of Slovenia - to the world. So the web app store as sort of a fair would be nice, but the problem is that it'd become overcrowded in a sec. So you just have to hustle :)


Did you checkout Bushido? http://gobushido.com

We deal with opensource apps only right now. But you can see how LocomotiveCMS is using Bushido to allow users to setup instance of the app with just a click. http://www.locomotivecms.com/

Disclaimer: I work for them.




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