Originally, when we started iusethis, the hot apps page was the frontpage of the site, a model similar to how many news sites work. Our hotness algorithm is based on a lot of different factors from the iusethis site, like downloads, comments and more, and it is updated every 4 hours.
However, we soon realized this didn't work as well for a software site as on the news sites, and for the last year, recent releases has been our frontpage. However, as we've grown, this solution isn't really satisfactory to us for a couple of reasons. One, it makes it easy for spammers to get on the frontpage, and secondly, there are a lot of very small apps that have marginal interest for most people.
To solve this issue, we've introduced a new feature on the recent apps site, threshold. By default, we only list apps with 5 users or more on the frontpage. You can easily change the thresold from the top of the page, to the right of the title. Note that the threshold also affects the RSS feed of the page, so if you'd like to apply a treshold to your RSS feed, you need to resubscribe.
If you want to 'digg for apps', the best approach is probably to look at the New Apps listing, or to surf recent releases with threshold 0.
Well, no it’s a bit hard to get users for entirely new apps. How about allowing the first submission to get on the frontpage? Or add a “New Apps” box on the right side.