My understanding is that there is an editorial meeting once a week in which Apple decides which apps to feature. I'm assuming that bigger companies have contacts in the editorial group. Can anyone speak to this?
Featuring changes every thursday. The week after featuring you end up in the "new and noteworthy" section which is like getting 1/2 to 2/3rds of a featuring.
For example, Horn was released last week on Thursday and was simultaneously the "Editor's choice" for the App Store feature.
Seems they are very secretive with this stuff too, nobody even knows how many app reviewers they employ, or where they're based out of.