Apple joins the selfie craze by adding a new dedicated section in the App Store that highlights the best selfie apps.

Selfies are gaining tremendous popularity.  Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie, which went viral to become the most retweeted photo ever, has added to the frenzy. The Oxford dictionary named "selfie" as the word of the year in 2013. With so much happening around selfies, Apple decided to create a separate app category for selfie-related apps. Apple's latest move suggests this use of mobile camera is here to stay.

Several photo apps aimed at taking perfect selfies are available on the App Store. Free selfie-focused apps like Frontback, Picr,Snapchat, Samba, Close-Up, Selfie Cam, SnapDash, Shot and many more, can do more than just take photos. For instance, Frontback uses both front and back cameras on a phone to show both shots in a single image. Picr helps users create time-lapse video of a group of pictures. Samba records viewers reactions while watching a video and reverts back the reaction to the sender. These apps are the free ones, Apple also features paid apps like Everyday, which reminds users to take a selfie each day and creates a selfie montage; Front Flash, which helps users take photos with front camera in low-light among others.

The new "Selfie Sharing" section can be found on the Featured page on Apple App Store and apps section for iTunes, says iDigitalTimes. The new entry is seen alongside the "Best New Apps", "Best New Games" and "Spectacular Stories: Games" menus. The selfie sharing area is currently limited to a certain apps when compared to other Features sections. But it makes it users to find what they are looking for more quickly and easily.

By the book's definition, "selfie" means taking a picture of one's own self using a camera and uploading the same to a social media site. The word got its first mention on Flickr back in 2004, but took nearly a decade before it went viral, something like the popular bird flying game Flappy Bird, which was dormant for a good five-month period before becoming the new sensation of mobile gaming. The simple looking game received so much attention that its creator Dong Nguyen finally decided to pull it down from the official app stores.

This genre of picture taking has even attracted scientists to do studies on its impact on our daily lives and what drives it.

The Cupertino tech giant is the first to feature such an option in its app store.