Finding great apps for your iPhone, iPod or iPad has become a prime area of interest for search developers, and Imaginary Feet, a developer of web and mobile applications for iOS, has launched Crosswa.lk, a social network for apps (we have several invite codes for readers–click here if you’d like to try the app out for yourself).

Admit it – it’s not easy to find the right app directly through the app store. Before lunch time, at least 200 new apps will be released into the Apple App Store alone. By the time you’re getting ready to hit the sack, another 300 apps will join the flood of 500,000+ apps.  So when you wake up tomorrow, there will be even more apps to choose from, making it all the more difficult to browse through them all.

Crosswa.lk hopes to change all that, delivering the apps to you based on your preferences and social graph. Crosswa.lk sorts and shifts through the clutter and finds the very best apps for you based on what your friends are using and what people like you are downloading.  Crosswa.lk is a free, web-based platform that “automagically” find relevant apps for you by using the magic of Apple’s iCloud to show what real people are downloading to their iDevice in real-time.

App Discovery is Broken

App stores and app discovery sites are typically large, impersonal repositories where your only means of finding new apps come from sales trends, awkward searches or recommendation engines that aren’t always relevant.   Users can only see comments and reviews from strangers with no way of filtering based on their own group of friends.

Crosswa.lk is Social with a Cloud Twist

Crosswa.lk is leveraging a few trends to create an intelligent recommendation engine, utilizing your social sphere to deliver accurate and relevant apps.   Crosswa.lk users get a personalized experience based on their complete persona, including interests and connections.  For example, you can search for a photography app based on those being used by actual photographers.

Being a socially levraged app, there’s Facebook integration right off the bat.  As an app discovery platform that leverages the new iCloud, Crosswa.lk adds a level of reliability and accuracy that has previously not been available.  Expand your social sphere by following people based on their self-identifying tags, friends from Facebook and Gmail or by searching the overall community.

In addition to the Crosswa.lk platform for consumers, developers can get into the action with a developer platform that will launch later this year.  Developers will get an in-depth look at how customers are accessing their apps, how other apps being purchased and how apps are performing, while also having a centralized place to directly respond to customers.

“We wanted to leverage what matters most to you – the people you care about – to create a new way to find apps,” said Thomas McLeod, president and co-founder of Imaginary Feet. “And we aimed to not only create a social and seamless user experience, but also a new way for developers to see which of their apps are being used, which aren’t – and why.  It will open a new door to the app cycle from developer to user, and a new era of how apps are created and discovered.”

There’s a few known issues Crosswa.lk is trying to take on here, making its appeal to both consumers and developers by building intelligence around mobile applications.  The iCloud integration is a curious feature, studying actual consumer behavior to improve its recommendation engine.  It’s entering a crowded market of app search tools and personalized recommendation services, so the social aspect of Crosswa.lk will also be important for its own growth and outreach.