Windows 8 may be an unproven platform, but the the opportunity to get in the ground floor still makes it an attractive one according to FlipToast founder Shivani Khanna. Originally a desktop service, FlipToast is the first social aggregation app to be released for Windows 8, a platform FlipToast views as its hope to crack the crowded mobile market.

“When Microsoft first launched Windows 8 the only social apps on the platform were Socialite, Facebook and Twitterama,” says Khanna. “They were looking to get someone dedicated to social to work on their platform. They asked us if we were interested in being the first social app. This was a lucrative proposition.”

Unlike on iOS and Android where native apps are king, FlipToast was able to build out its Windows 8 app using JavaScript, a language typically used in web development. This factor, explains Khanna, makes Windows 8 a safe bet for developers who might want to try mobile, but don’t have the resources to put into dedicated Android or iOS apps.

“The pros from the developer’s perspective is that you don’t have that much of a learning curve,” she says. “The cons are definitely adoption.”

Although FlipToast has struggled to ensure its app will make an impact on Windows 8, overall early numbers are promising. Khanna reports FlipToast is seeing an average of 30 minutes a day on its application, a number than includes users on mobile, tablets and desktops.

“If I had to build an app today I would probably pick Windows 8 because there’s an advantage of being first to platform,” she says. “Microsoft has a lot of money and they’re spending $1.5 billion marketing this thing. They know how to drive adoption. Ballmer predicted 500 million devices will be running windows 8 by the end of next year. Even if we got 1 percent of that market, that is still a huge number for small developers like us.”