Elon Musk's Tweet Gives Zero a Surge of Downloads

Ariel Ariel
9/2/22

This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #129 - Twitter's Finally Growing (its Revenue). Check out the full article for more insights.


Earlier in the week Twitter kingmaker Elon Musk did something he hasn't done in a while. Elon helped an app get downloads!

Last Sunday, Elon casually mentioned on Twitter he started intermittent fasting, and right after mentioned Zero and said it's "quite good".

How many downloads does "quite good" get you when tweeted by Elon Musk? Let's have a look at our App Intelligence:

Zero fasting app download estimates

Zero is an app for tracking intermittent fasting founded by Kevin Rose, the guy behind Digg. I'm dating myself here, but now you have context.

The app has been available since the end of 2016, and in the last few months averaged roughly 5,000 new downloads per day, according to our estimates.

On Sunday, when Elon tweeted it, downloads jumped to 41,000, and on Monday to 47,000. Downloads sloped on Tuesday because tweets don't have that much momentum, but still ended the day with a cool 29,000.

In total, one casual tweet about an app most people don't need, earned Zero about 108 thousand new downloads. Compared to about 15 thousand it would have gotten without it.

That might not sound like a lot when compared to the millions of downloads Elon got for Signal last year, but that's a lot of downloads for Zero. In fact, it's the most downloads the app has ever seen in a single day. And considering it's somewhat niche, I see this as a serious positive.

I'm sure Zero is happy, and it's a good reminder that influencer marketing is a great way to get downloads. Especially when it's done casually.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

Are you a Journalist? You can get access to our app and market intelligence for free through the Appfigures for Journalists program. Contact us for more details.

All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.

Tagged: #social-media

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