Mark Bridge writes:

I’ve written previously about the changes happening to mobile application stores. Last week I was talking to Todd Levy about the family-friendly application store he’s planning to launch. He explained how BloomWorlds would be curated to provide trusted reviews that weren’t skewed by the app developers themselves.

Mobile affiliate network OfferMobi has also been bringing attention to the “dirty little secret” of the app charts suffering from developers who manipulate the figures. It says Incentivized Cost Per Install - offering users virtual currency in exchange for installing an app - is temporarily boosting installation figures but resulting in low quality users. As you’d probably expect, it’s a fan of app usage and not merely downloads… and it has a commercial solution.

Howie Schwartz of OfferMobi said “With such a large volume of app developers now attempting to manipulate the charts at once using incentivized CPI, it has become more difficult than ever for a company stay on them long enough to attract actual REAL users. After the Beta launch for iOS earlier this year of the OfferMobi App Discovery Network, we are pleased to bring the platform to Android devices to provide App developers with a cost-effective platform changing the game for App developers who desire non-incentivized installs of their apps to build true lifetime value with their installs.”

But the biggest news comes from Yahoo! Mobile, which has introduced a new mobile application called AppSpot. That’s right - not its own app store but an app-finding app. Apparently it “works like a flashlight in the darkness of more than 425,000-plus apps in the Apple App Store and 200,000 apps in Android Market”. Hyperbole aside, it’s available on iPhone and Android devices - and it’ll do its best to recommend apps based on your preferences.

Is this the future?  As Todd and I discussed last week, this sort of thing is certainly a solution... but the big-name app stores with their overloaded shelves will be with us for quite a while yet.