A new app rose to the top of the charts this week, if only for a brief moment. But that brief moment reminded me of another app that isn't similar in features but is in business essence.
frfr, all lowercase for some reason, is an anonymous voice messaging app. Yes, anonymous + voice. A perfect combo?
Its simple icon, basic essence, screenshots, and overall tone reminded me a lot of Gas.
Remember Gas? The app that took the top charts by storm last year using growth tactics some would consider "black hat", accumulated millions of downloads, and then got sold to Discord and disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared? That's the one.
I think the only winners there were the founders...
For real!
The app officially launched in April and hasn't seen any real traction until the beginning of May, when downloads started rising. A little at first - 7K up from just a few hundred the day before - and then fast, peaking at 170K on Saturday, according to our App Intelligence.
Like most other fly-by hits, and unlike Gas, frfr's downloads dropped right after they peaked but are still trending high.
As of Wednesday, frfr already had 729K downloads across the App Store and Google Play. The majority of those, 85% to be more precise, came from the App Store, and the majority of those, 77%, came from the US. No real surprises there.
Does anyone really want anonymous voice messages though? I definitely don't, but I'm probably not their target demographic.
By the way, "fr" in frfr stands for "for real". I think. I only know that because there's another app called fr (or Frog, depending on where you look), that's trying to get some traction right now.
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