This Week in Apps #13 - Lots of Controversies

This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.


Robinhood steals the show

Seeing the potential for profit in uncertainty, retail investors (aka. regular users) flocked to fee-free investing app Robinhood to capitalize. Downloads spiked when lockdowns started in march, and then again as protests broke last week. In that time, Robinhood added more than 5,000,000 new mobile users. Report

Still doing it

Locked down, you would expect online dating to take a break, right? Nope! While downloads have slumped, dating app Hinge has seen App Store revenue grow by 50% since February. FYI - those peaks are Saturdays.

A cardinal Zynn

TikTok's newest enemy, Zynn, is in the news again. This time it isn't for its shady user acquisition tactics but rather for stealing content from other platforms. Google Play didn't like that and took Zynn down. Before going down, Zynn had amassed more than 750,000 Android users.

Private, but...

Privacy-first browser Brave got a 3x increase in downloads last Friday, as protesters and police clashed all around the country. The spike landed the app nearly 40,000 new users in one day. That didn't last long, however. This week, news spread that Brave is modifying links for profit without telling its users. Downloads are still up a bit. No news is bad news.

All-time high 👏

Amid a global pandemic, protests, and a heated feud with President Trump, Twitter hit a new record! The app reached a new single-day download high at the end of May, bringing in 713,000 new downloads all around the globe. The last all-time high was reached in March.

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