The State of Apps with Olivia Moore

I think the opportunity maybe has never been greater to build and monetize a mobile app quickly, make a few million dollars, and retire if that's what you want to do.

Welcome back to the a16z Podcast, and also welcome to what I think is one of our best episodes to date. Today, I talked to a16z consumer partner Olivia Moore about what I'm calling the state of the App Store. So look, a few weeks ago, Apple released this stunning statistic. They said they've paid developers over $320 Billion dollars, yes, billion, since the launch of the App Store in 2008. And around the same time, I saw Olivia post a tweet where she had basically compiled a list of the top apps in the US App Store throughout 2022. So in this episode, you'll not only get to hear what made it to the top, but also what they have in common. Hint, a lot of the big winners are in social, but perhaps a new wave of social apps. We also get the scoop on not just what it takes to hit number one, but to stay there. And we covered tons of examples, many of which I had never heard of. Things like a new age Beanie Baby app, A viral talking dog, an app from 2012 that finally hit the top 10, and a Chinese app that's been number 1 for a majority of this year. And that's not TikTok. There are endless learnings about how founders can take advantage of these opportunities, including Olivia and I's master plans to top the charts ourselves. So stick around to the end if you'd like to hear that. Let's get started. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. Should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security. and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures. Olivia, welcome to the show, and I'd love to start out by hearing how you compiled this data in the first place.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here and talk more about this data. So I used an app data source called appfollow.io. And they publish a daily ranking chart where they show the top iOS apps every day, um, based on the Apple App Store ranks. And so I went in for every day of 2022 and I recorded what the top app was for that day.

Oh my gosh.

And it took a while, but the end result ended up being pretty interesting cuz I was able to run a bunch of numbers and analysis on the apps that did crack that number one spot.

First, like, kudos. Let's, let's all give, you know, listener claps for you actually going in every single day and pulling this data. But let's talk about the results. What were the top apps of 2022? And let's just start with the top 3 and then we'll get into some of the ones that followed.

So there were 3 big winners of 2022, which were BeReal, which is a new social media app. TikTok, of course, was number 2, and then Gas App was number 3. Gas App is an interesting story because it was actually released later in the year in the fall, so it kind of came from behind with less time to grab the number 3 spot for the year overall.

I have to say that I'm not really very active on any of those 3 apps, so I feel super old hearing that they are the 3 topping the charts. But just to reiterate, so these are the 3 apps that hit number 1 the most.

Yes, they spent the most number of days at the top in the number 1 spot on the US App Store.

I feel like the natural question is, are we in a new age of social? Because all 3 of these happen to be social apps. And again, I'm feeling kind of old here, but during my era, you know, we're thinking of Facebook, we're thinking of Twitter, um, Instagram, Snapchat, and none of these appeared in the top 3. And so I don't know, what's your, what's your take there? Are we in like a new age? Are we diverging from the past in terms of what people want in terms of social?

Yeah, it's a great question. And none of the, the kind of usual suspects, the Instagrams, the Snapchats, or the Facebooks appeared in the top at all, let alone the top 3. The top 5 apps this year in terms of days at the top were actually all social media products. And 3 out of those 5 were apps that didn't even exist 2 years ago. That is definitely not always the case. I pulled the data for 2021 as well, and the top 5 for that year was a mix of some social media, but also fintech, more utility or business apps like Zoom, and then traditional media apps like kind of HBO Max. To me, the fact that Instagram and Snapchat didn't appear at the top doesn't necessarily mean they're kind of dead as products. I think part of what it means is they've saturated the US user base, so they aren't getting a ton of new downloads every day.

I also want to think about how these social apps differ, because it feels like the old generation of social apps were pretty similar. They're more of like a feed-based social application. And it feels like, again, I'm not, I'm not native to these 3 that made it to the top, but they do feel kind of fundamentally different in what they're providing to the user.

I absolutely agree. I think we've seen this broader shift towards authenticity and towards more interactive experiences on social and away from maybe the traditional scrollable feed where everyone has like this perfectly curated profile and maybe you post once a week or once a month. 3 of the kind of top 5 apps were new social media apps. TikTok is kind of in its own world as already a giant company at this point. But BeReal is a front-back camera that only is live once a day for a limited period of time. So you have to be very kind of honest about what you're actually doing. It shows both sides of the camera. Gas App, of course, is about giving anonymous compliments to friends, mostly aimed towards high schoolers. And then Livin also made the top 5, and this is an app that lets you send kind of random pictures directly to your friends' home screen widgets. Similar to BeReal, they're usually pretty candid shots. I think those 3 in common for me are about having more delightful and consistent ways to interact with a smaller group of close friends. versus maybe these large feed products where you're seeing tons of posts from influencers and brands and larger companies, and it's a very kind of curated experience.

I also think about the fact that they're kind of like pushing back on the previous generation of social apps. It feels like, you know, in the generation that I grew up with, we were so heavily curated that the next generation is like, I don't like this. I don't like the fact that everyone looks like a supermodel on Instagram. Let's just be real, literally, and, you know, take pictures of us throughout the day. I also think what you mentioned about the fact that a lot of these are new apps, like even Gas, you mentioned, like just showed up in the second part of the year. How hard is it for these apps to stay on top? It also feels like we were in this heyday several years ago where something like a Facebook was top of the charts for a very long time. And there wasn't really this cyclical nature of like a new app, a new app, a new app. And Today it feels a little different. I don't know if it's just me.

No, I absolutely agree with you. My data shows that there's kind of a lot more new number ones every year, and kind of the pace of that is speeding up every year. Apple is a little bit secretive about what actually makes a number one. Most people think that the biggest factor is daily downloads, and then of course they add in maybe some filtering around, okay, are people actually opening the app? Are they engaging with it? My data polls show you need probably around or maybe a little bit above 100,000 downloads in the US on iOS on any given day to hit number 1.

Whoa. Okay. Yeah, that's super high.

Yes, very high. And so if you think about the path of a normal consumer discovering a brand new product, 100,000 people knowing about that is huge about that brand new product, but also Not everyone who hears about it or learns about it is actually gonna download it and convert to a user. So you actually probably need millions of people to hear and learn about your product over just a couple days to get to like 100,000 downloads a day. And you're competing against like some of the other number ones this year were like NBC's Peacock streaming service, Planet Fitness, DoorDash, HBO Max, these big companies that have tons of marketing resources. My view is that TikTok, Instagram Reels, and these other short-form video platforms Platforms have created this very unique opportunity where you can go viral and have something be seen by 10 million people in a day and shoot to this top. But now every new startup is competing against all the other startups that are also trying TikTok. So it's still not easy at all.

Is there also an element of just not it being so hard to get to the top, but also staying at the top? It feels like we have smaller attention spans, People are excited to move on to the next thing instead of sticking with the applications that they know and love. Is that just me interpreting the data, or are we actually seeing something here where it's not only harder to reach the top, but it's also harder to stay at the top?

I completely agree. The largest number of apps that hit number 1 this year were number 1 for just a day, or maybe half a day, not that long at all. And more than half of the apps at number 1 were up there for less than 5 days, throughout the whole year, not even 5 consecutive days. What I've seen is, you know, it's if you have a TikTok viral hit, you can maybe get a lot of people to download it, but then it needs to be a very strong product with network effects that encourages people to share it via word of mouth and to keep using it every day beyond that initial, oh, I saw this cool video about this app and I'm going to download it. So my view is it's in some ways easier to break into the top than it was 5 years ago, but it's probably actually quite a bit harder to stay at the top unless you have a very kind of magical and retentive product.

And how do you think about creating that product? Because I think about so many applications that are really exciting and play into this need for us to just have constantly new things on our screens. I mean, something that even comes to mind there is I've been seeing articles about how People are speeding up songs, or we all are familiar with like the TikTok split screen. It's like we actually need to pack more information into our content because we need to have that level of interest. How do you build that level of retention when it does feel like there is this interest of, again, novelty? Like, give me something new all the time.

I think it's largely a couple things. I think it's a product question of like, have you built something that kind of delivers value day after day. And ideally, those are network effect products, which means the product gets better the more people are on it. Like, think about the early days of Instagram. Like, as more of your friends came on Instagram, it was a better experience for you and a better experience for them because you were seeing a lot more posts from people that you know and care about. I think the other interesting element that we're starting to see companies index or lean towards more is these hooks within the products or around the products to encourage people to both come back, but also to share or broadcast their behavior. So 2 of the top 3 this year, BeReal is one of them. And because the BeReal drops at the same time per day for everyone, it creates this moment in the real world actually where everyone is taking out their phones and being real, whether it's in, you know, a classroom. I've had people do it in meetings, if you're in line for something. And that is a very kind of powerful and unique, like, word-of-mouth, in-real-life moment where if you don't have the BeReal and you see everyone get the ding and pull out their phones, you're going to check it out. Gas App also has a very kind of clever hook. They went in through high schools. The mechanism of the product is that you vote for which of your friends is kind of the top under XYZ, all very positive criteria. And so it creates this kind of FOMO again in the halls of the high school where people are saying, oh, did you see, you know, who got this on Gas App? Or you're getting a notification of your friend voted for you for this. And it's very hard to resist that kind of pull when you're both hearing about it online and you're seeing the people around you in real life utilizing the product.

Yeah, your point about BeReal made me think of, I think it was an SNL skit where they were joking about You know, BeReal popping up during a bank heist.

Yes.

You're like, whoa, wait, just a second. I need to be real. And yeah, there is this like behavioral element where, to your point, it feels like you need people to build these habits and not just internally, but to share them externally so you can have those network effects and word of mouth growth. But on that point about growth, you mentioned 100,000 downloads in a day. That is huge. Like any marketing budget. probably can't hit that purely through paid growth. And so there does need to be this viral element. What would you say about being able to do that effectively? Because, you know, I think about Gas App, for example, which was recently acquired. Prior to the acquisition, Nikita, the founder, went on the Today Show and had this big exclusive segment, which in the past would have been like huge for, for an application or a company. And he said he thinks it generated 1,000 downloads. So I guess what I'm getting at is like, How do you effectively grow an app when a lot of the existing channels just don't really compare to this idea of word of mouth?

I see word of mouth as kind of the purest, maybe, form, and most lasting if you can get it right, form of acquisition, just because the barrier that's probably hardest to overcome, like, I mean, you can pay people to download your app, you can pay influencers to talk about it, but to get a normal person who isn't looking for startups every day to recognize a new product and then go use it, and then tell someone else about it because it's that valuable or interesting to them, that's kind of the ultimate to me, like the peak of a great consumer product. I do think we still see like TikTok as an organic channel is still very powerful. It's probably harder to build an audience on TikTok, especially as a startup, than it was a year and a half ago or 2 years ago. And it'll get harder and harder over time. Companies are starting to use TikTok ads, which is also interesting. Again, like, Low cost for now, great channel for now. Similar to how Instagram and Facebook ads got so much more expensive, kind of the arbitrage opportunity of these new platforms tends to go away over time. What is interesting and always fun to see is sometimes there's these big acquisition moments that aren't at all orchestrated by the company but orchestrated by the user base, and they're almost their own kind of special form of word of mouth. At like massive scale. One of the top apps this year was called Talking Ben the Dog, which is a kids' educational science game where you're taking care of this fluffy dog and you can ask him questions about science and do experiments with him. But it went viral after this YouTuber with 15 million subscribers, an adult YouTuber, started making videos of himself trying to debate really serious topics with Ben. And then of course it turned into a meme and everyone else made their own videos about it. And then the app was suddenly at number 1 again after being released, you know, years and years ago by, by an app studio who made it for a completely different use case than, than where it actually took off.

I know the users have a mind of their own. The other story I like was shared by your sister, which was this boating app, right? There was a, a girl whose father had created this boating app, and then there's this clip of him at a conference where he's trying to get people to download the app. And quite frankly, it was really sad, or it sparked that emotion. And it just said something like, hey, please help my dad's boating app or something like that. A really, really short video, as you said, on TikTok, which seems to be a place where people are getting these viral hits. Um, and I think it hit number 7 or something in the App Store, which maybe people are like, oh, number 7 is not that high. But again, you said to hit number 1, All of these are social apps, general mass-marketed apps, and they require 100,000 downloads. So that's still a lot of downloads in a day.

A lot of downloads, and it illustrates just the pure difficulty of getting to number 1 because her TikTok had more than 20 million views, and then she made several follow-up videos that also had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. So if that can't even hit, you know, number 1 for the day, then it kind of just puts into context Uh, how much of a challenge it can be.

There have been some other apps which, as you said, did not hit number 1, but still really hit some traction. And I want to talk about the different categories outside of social that saw some movement in 2022. So what were some of those categories that we saw outside of social?

There were 2 or 3 kind of themes that to me dominated the apps at the top this year. And 2 of them were actually what I see as tech shifts or tech progress that enable new consumer behavior. So one big example of that is widgets. We saw a couple of widget apps at, at the top at some point, mostly in summer 2022. And these kind of exploded after Apple made a change to iOS 16 that allowed users to put widgets on their home screen of their phone and also on their lock screen of their phone. So you didn't even have to unlock the phone and you could see what popped up on a widget. So then there was a group of new companies. Note It, for example, is one where you could send little notes to your significant other or little drawings. Locket Widget was probably the first one to explode in January and then was followed by Livin, Widgetable, a bunch of other apps that really capitalized on this kind of not a full platform shift, but kind of a maybe an operating shift, a system shift by Apple that allowed for this. Another big tech shift that became a trend in top apps was AI, of course.

Of course.

And that came as mostly in the fall when models like Stable Diffusion became available to fully build into mobile apps and create experiences where you didn't have to have your own AI model as a developer, but you could still allow people to spin up beautiful art or avatars. We saw those apps basically dominate the late Q3, early Q4 top charts. And the last theme is actually not at all unique to 2022, in my opinion, but is kind of evergreen, which is anonymous social apps. We see these pop up pretty consistently every year. When I was a teenager, it was like Honesty Box on Facebook and then Ask.fm and Formspring. Gas App was of course probably the best example of this for 2022. Nikita, the founder, just sold to Discord, and he actually developed a very similar app back in 2016, 2017 that he sold to Facebook that also hit number 1 for a while. So I think the big lesson there is like the FOMO pull, especially for teenagers, of what are my friends saying about me is very, very hard to resist.

It's so true. And I can think of so many apps from when I was growing up that were really successful for a period of time, and then you've seen iterations of them them since. And to your point, like Nikita literally just copied what worked before, what he sold to Facebook before, and then repurposed it, created Gas, and has now had another acquisition. So, I mean, maybe this is a silly question, but is that worth doing? As in, if you're, if there's a founder out there or a potential founder, should they just be combing through previous successful apps like a, a Yik Yak, for example, and just creating the Yik Yak of 2023? Because we've seen— how effective they can be and how also kind of evergreen they are because there's these like innate human emotions like Gas App to be complimented or BeReal to like to be understood, right? There's like these fundamental human emotions that don't change across generations.

I feel like a consistent debate in the tech world of like who's gonna build the first anonymous social app that has like true staying power and becomes a billion-dollar company on its own. There's already in 2023 a new app that just raised a seed round that hit number 1 in Germany. It's called Slay, very similar to Gas App and TBH. So another example of kind of that trend playing out. I think there's— I mean, and Nikita himself has said this, there's always going to be a question of these apps that are based around kind of anonymous networks. Can you really build like a lasting social network? Because people aren't really storing relationships on the app, they're not really communicating or direct messaging through the app. So they get very popular very, very fast. If there's no maybe act 2 of the app, like if there's no what's next, then they can also kind of decline very, very fast as that core dense group of people that joined unravels a little bit more and moves on to the next thing.

I also wonder, we've talked already about this phenomena where it seems like people are cycling through apps more quickly. And if that really is an underlying foundational trend, is there maybe an argument to say like, you don't need to last very long and really the goal is to create some sort of viral sensation, but also build monetization in from the get-go? I mean, Gas, I feel like is, is a good example of this. I think Nikita has. Publicly said that they made millions of dollars in the several months where they were trending prior to the acquisition. And so ignore the acquisition. If someone, a founder, built a successful social app that trended even for a few months and made several million dollars, I would say that's a success. It's not a FAANG-level success where you go on to be a multibillion-dollar company, but I think maybe would you say there's an argument to people focusing more on that Given the state of the App Store?

Oh, absolutely. I think it all comes down to what you as a founder are wanting to build. And I think the opportunity maybe has never been greater to build and monetize a mobile app quickly, make a few million dollars, and retire if that's what you want to do. Clearly, Nikita is still building, so he's not at the retirement point yet. But I think one of his last tweets about the app before the acquisition said they had had like 10 million downloads and $6 million in revenue, which is just amazing. There used to be this kind of paradigm in consumer where the goal was to build an app, get it to the mainstream, get it to Facebook level, Instagram level, millions, if not hundreds of millions of users. And then you would monetize people through ads. Like the user kind of becomes the product. And now I'm, I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what it is. I think it's a mix of like Apple Pay and Google Pay adoption and saturation. people getting more comfortable making purchases online. Maybe it's the younger generation who is, you know, happy and feels safe buying something on their phone versus my parents' generation is still like suspicious of Venmo and thinks their money is going to get stolen every time. But we are seeing many more apps get big and make money at the same time and at an early stage in their life. Lensa is another really good example of this, which was another number one from late 2022. They are an AI avatar company. And some of the external app data estimates say that they made upwards of $20 million in a couple of weeks getting people to buy a pack of avatars for $8. I certainly participated in that.

I did too.

It's hard to resist if you see everyone else posting them on Twitter, and it seems like a fairly minor payment at the time. I think Lensa is an interesting one because you then want to say, what's the next act of the company? Is the goal to get people to give you money once and then they get all the value out of the product and leave? Lensa has been smart in that they're constantly releasing new styles, new packs, new avatars. They did dog avatars for the first time a few weeks ago, which I bought. So I think once you're on someone's phone and can send them notifications, there is a potential to kind of continue to capitalize on that down the line.

Yeah, I like your point about the younger generation being maybe more willing to spend money online because it reminds me of how not that long ago people were really resistant to even spending $0.99 on an app. And I know there's a difference. Some of these apps are charging upfront versus having in-app purchases versus monetizing in other ways. But it's kind of interesting how there was a period of time where people were just really resistant to paying for apps or things within apps, even if they brought much more value than, for example, $5 coffee. They were like, No way, this is unfair, this should be free. And I think there is a shift there where people, maybe it's just the younger generation growing up with these apps and, and seeing that people are starting to pay for them, but it does seem like there's a more willingness to spend. But I'm also curious to know across the different apps that you've explored, you mentioned Lensa as an example, like, are there any themes or learnings from the ways that people have decided to monetize? Is it better to charge upfront for the app? Is it better to have these in-app purchases? And if you're doing in-app purchases, it's like, are there learnings or themes in terms of how people have been able to effectively get people to give their credit card?

It's a very good question. And I actually feel that kind of gaming companies, both apps and just traditional games, have kind of, you know, paved the way here. In gaming, they have kind of this concept of like the whales. Which is that the vast majority of your user base is probably going to be free users or generate very minimal revenue. But then you'll have some people who spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every month on your app. And it really adds up over the course of a year. And so the goal is to kind of acquire free users as much as possible and then convert the ones you can into that whale-type behavior. I still think we've yet to see an app hit number 1 that charges for a download. For some reason, that kind of cognitive shift of like, I can't even see what it does or how it works before I pay, still seems to be like a barrier for most consumers. What we're seeing most apps do is in-app purchases similar to games, and that's something like what Lensa did, where, you know, you get to the moment where you can deliver a lot of value and they'll pay for that specific item or that specific delivery. Subscriptions are maybe the more classic for consumer apps of how they monetize. I wrote about this the other day, but we had this first wave of consumer subscription apps that were all charging $60 a year. Like, think about the Calms of the world, the Headspaces, all the fitness apps. Many of those are amazing companies, but it's hard to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue on things like those. So we're seeing subscription app developers start to be a little more aggressive in their pricing, whether that's charge everyone more if they're willing to convert to paid, or have different tiers of pricing. Tinder, for example, is supposedly testing a $500 a month tier.

I've heard this.

There's been a lot of skepticism about that, but I mean, from my perspective, it doesn't hurt the people paying less, and if someone's willing to pay $500 and feel like Tinder is delivering that value, to them with maybe a more sophisticated product, like, I think they should go for it.

I agree, and it actually fits what we've seen in many other industries. To use apparel as an example, the messy middle is what typically doesn't do so well. It's really the, the really cheap options that resonate with one user base or buyer base, and then the really expensive luxury items that do really well for the people who want that and want to be able to signal in certain ways. And again, that messy middle doesn't really serve anyone, and so I don't know. I hear the skepticism, but I'm very interested to see how Tinder works because there's also the argument with dating apps, which is that they don't have the aligned incentives to actually want to match you because they want you on the app forever. Yeah, that'll be fascinating.

I think you can do it by charging the user directly, but we're also seeing subscription apps really evolve in who they're making the money from. In some cases, subscription apps are going B2B or even developing new versions of the product that are sophisticated enough to get like an insurer to pay for it. So Calm just launched an actual clinical mental health offering that's catered towards people with anxiety and depression that they've partnered with insurers who will pay quite a bit more every year than the, than the $60 a year annual program to have people on that. So I feel we've kind of entered a new era of subscription pricing, which is very exciting.

Yeah. You know, that reminds me of an app that I have not seen. It might exist in the US, But a friend of mine, this was years ago, so this is not new, had their insurance company would give them this app. And when they completed certain activities like a workout, things like that, they would get points because, you know, the calculus for the insurance company was, okay, if they're doing these activities, they're likely going to be a net lower cost for us because they're living a healthy lifestyle. And they would get, my friend Ed, he would get like Starbucks gift cards or things in return for those activities. And I was like, man, I really want this. I do a lot of these activities and I don't get Yeah. But I haven't seen that, and that's a great example of how the end user of the app is not paying anything. And in fact, they're actually getting paid through those rewards, but there is someone on the back end, which is the insurance provider, who is paying. And yeah, to your point, probably a lot more than the $0.99 that some apps are charging for.

Yeah, that's a fascinating idea. I think we'll see more and more gamification of kind of good behavior as apps become more addictive. Sitting on TikTok and scrolling for hours, we're starting to see this rise of new focus apps where you kind of grow a tree or grow a pet for every 10 minutes you spend off your phone. I've also seen similar apps where you get kind of rewards or points for not being on your phone while driving. So the phone can kind of detect when you're in movement that feels like a car, and then when you don't pick up the phone, it gives you X number of points that This app was focused towards college campuses so you could redeem them at a campus restaurant or something, but I love those types of ideas.

That's a great example of similar to the widgets, when you pay attention to some of these software changes, like the ability to detect when a phone is moving or in the widget example, when they have that different UI. I mean, it's incredible. Like you said, some of the widget companies rose close to the top. And, um, I think that's a, maybe a good learning. One learning we've already discussed is maybe paying attention to some of these like apps of the past that had the transient nature, but also linked to fundamental human desires. But then this is another one, like paying attention to the different technology changes that Apple is releasing as potential layers that you can integrate into a new application.

Absolutely. And I think like the fact that there were so many widget apps and so many AI art apps that made it to number 1 shows that it's not necessarily the first to market that kind of wins the space or gets all the value out of the space. Once consumers are kind of aware of something new and exciting is out there, there's an opportunity to kind of optimize your keywords in the App Store if they're searching for things like widgets, to run lower-cost ads, to do, you know, TikTok videos. There's still lots of room to build compelling and kind of engaging products beyond the first one that maybe breaks open the market for everyone else.

Lensa is the perfect example of this, right? So there were at least, I'm aware of 2 or 3 different web-based applications, profilepicture.ai, and then Avatar AI as well, which had come out first with this idea of creating personalized avatars. I believe all, all of these products are based off of the same APIs and the same infrastructure. And so, yeah, maybe they might have slightly different prompts, but it was the, you know, relatively the same output as well. And these web-based applications did relatively well. I think they had at least a several-week head start, but they were web-based. And what was fascinating about Lensa was, I mean, just maybe the UX of having it on your phone, maybe a better name. To your point, like really not drastic changes in the product. But then I believe the first few that I mentioned, they did well, but maybe they made $100,000 or something. Nothing close to the network effects or the virality of Lensa, which— to your point, had millions of downloads and made millions of dollars in a very short span of time.

That's so true. I think to your point about analyzing maybe what's behind the consumer behavior and consumer interest for AI avatars, I tried many of the web-based platforms, which are fantastic, but it is kind of a pain to AirDrop or email yourself all the photos that you want to use to train the model from your phone to your And so I think Lensa really being the first kind of aggressive push on mobile for that was really smart. And then on mobile, you can enable notifications. So Lensa is able to say, hey, we added this new style that we think you might be interested in. Hey, we added this kind of, you know, avatars for dogs or avatars where you and your friend can be in it together. Like, I think them, their capitalization on mobile as a platform was really smart and kind of vaulted them ahead of a lot of the web-based avatar products that did come out first and, and have similar quality images, but were just harder to use.

That's such a great point. Even just the push notifications. In the other cases, they also added pets and different prompts that evolved the product. But every time they did that, it's like, oh, you have to send out another email and there's a limitation to the number of emails you send out and the conversion rate's going to be lower. And so that's such a great point about Just the idea of being mobile native and then also potentially having access to a larger swath of people who are on mobile. Let's pivot a little bit. We talked about different categories that might be interesting or surprising. You mentioned one already, but I want to hear what other individual apps maybe you thought were surprising that showed up in this list. And, you know, Ben the Dog, Talking Ben the Dog was one for me where I was like, what is this? Why is it in the top of the app? Charts. So were there any others that you were kind of surprised to see in that list?

I am always obsessed with App Store data because the stories that it tells about what's happening in the real world are just always really fascinating. Another one that I think a lot of people were surprised to see hit number 1 this year was the 7-Eleven app for the convenience store chain. Ah, but that almost always hits number 1 on Free Slurpee Day, July 11th, every year Because you have to have the app to get the Slurpee. And then actually 2 days later, we saw McDonald's hit number 1 on July 13th because it was Free French Fry Day for the National French Fry Holiday.

I was not notified of this holiday.

Exactly. So we're seeing these kind of larger, more legacy companies get these fun one-off spikes that happen when they kind of combine their real-world events and activations with something in the app. This also, I've seen, plays out with a lot more kind of serious real-world events. So Starlink, which is kind of the satellite internet provider, hit number 1 in September when they actually launched 52 new satellites into orbit.

Wow.

And I think the news articles, the Twitter videos, everything around that kind of monumental launch then made people think, you know, I want to check this out. Another big one was The NOAA Climate app hit number 1 during Hurricane Ian this fall. And then another really interesting and kind of cultural moment app, there's a next-gen period tracking app for women, which claims kind of special encryptions that make it harder for subpoenaing the data or anything like that. And that reached number 1 just a few days after the Roe v. Wade verdict, so after it was overturned in the US. So I think, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line, actually, the stories that come out through this, you know, data that might not seem the most monumental are actually going to be kind of really interesting and revealing about what happened in a given year.

I love that. I love that you can almost see, yeah, like the moments of the year embedded within the charts. So let's look forward. We're now in 2023. We've got some great data from 2022, and I know you actually looked at 2021 as well, so we'll include that too in the show notes. But as we look forward, like, what should we be paying attention to? What kind of apps do you think are going to thrive in this new year?

So there's already an early— I don't want to say winner, but maybe an early leader for 2023, which is Temu, which is a new commerce app developed by a large Chinese company called Pinduoduo. And in China, the version of this app is a full group buying experience. Say you're going to purchase a bag of apples or something and the price on the app is $2. The more friends you invite to add a bag of apples to the order, the price can go all the way down to like 10 cents, 5 cents. So it kind of gamifies commerce. The US version of it is a little bit less sophisticated so far, but it is basically deep discounts on these products that are largely kind of shipping from overseas. There is quite a bit of gamification around inviting your friends to get extra points that then you can win free items shipped directly from you or even withdraw cash from the app by inviting other friends to download it. So unsurprisingly, that has resulted in a ton of downloads.

Yeah, free money.

Yes. From my most recent check, I think of, of the 25 days so far this year, Temu has been at the top for like 22 of them. They were not number 1 on New Year's Day because some like habit tracker app or New Year's resolution app hit it, but otherwise they've held the top spot. And that number of days would be good enough to break into the top 5 last year. So I'm gonna make an early call that we'll see Temu at least in the top 5, if not higher. Temu is an interesting example of another kind of trend I expect to see in 2023. 3, which is AI, almost invisible AI products, where we've seen these AI-first products, all the avatar and art apps, but TikTok was actually one of the first and still best examples of invisible AI, where the reason the product is so addictive is because they have this algorithm that becomes catered to you. Temu does this really well also. They have this marketplace in the backend of inventory from thousands of suppliers, But as soon as you've browsed the app for 5 or 10 minutes, they can tell pretty quickly what is she clicking on, what is she interested in, and then they'll serve you deals and products that are really catered to your interests. So I expect to see more companies kind of utilizing that almost AI infrastructure.

You know, that's a great point because we've seen the rise of TikTok as people shift from what people might say is more connection-based or contact-based interaction on social to interest-based where it doesn't matter if you know the person, but TikTok, because it's got such a strong AI backend, is servicing the things that it knows you're going to like and it gets better and better over time. And I think this actually fits into what we discussed before about how it's really hard to create stickiness with these apps over a period of time. And again, I think it's because, you know, on one hand, it's really nice to be able to leverage word of mouth as people tell you something. Um, but on the other hand, that word of mouth changes very quickly. But if you have a strong backend where you can evolve that and you can kind of follow the user through their journey of liking something and then liking something else later, I think that's why TikTok has been so sticky because, you know, I've heard people who start on TikTok and they listen to dancing videos, but then all of a sudden TikTok picks up that they like power washing videos or like keto recipes or, and it follows them through that journey. And so there's no need for them to go look for something else. And so I, I like that you mentioned these 2 applications that have AI in the backend, but I also think there's a nature to that that is much more sticky than AI that's in your face, as you said, like a Lensa, for example. Yeah.

This is also a fascinating point because it brings up another trend that I think we expect to see in 2023 that's very counterintuitive and I think kind of reverses a wave that we saw in 2021 and 2022, which is that the AI algorithm of TikTok is so good that it will get you enormous reach for your product very, very quickly. And so we've seen this trend with a lot of early-stage consumer companies where a video will hit and go viral and suddenly have 1 million, 5 million, 10 million views, and they'll get a flood of users that the product is not actually ready for and that the product isn't kind of equipped to retain. And so we've seen actually a few startups I've talked to recently have started limiting their own virality. Which sounds impossible because virality is theoretically organic. But what they'll do is if a video starts performing too well on TikTok, it gets too many views, they will actually temporarily shut off the video or archive the video because it's driving too many downloads and they feel like they're not necessarily converting those downloads into engaged users quite well enough yet. So I think we'll see maybe the strategy around how founders utilize TikTok Hopefully to their advantage, also evolve quite a bit in this coming year.

Yeah, it also reminds me of something you've mentioned before, which is that TikTok is so good that even users as well are kind of limiting themselves from the app. I do this. I don't go on TikTok because I am very well aware that TikTok's algorithm is better than my self-control. And so I need to just shut it down and not go on the application because I know I will inevitably find myself 2 hours later looking up and asking what happened. So are there examples of apps that you've seen that kind of leverage this pushback on how good some of these apps are at capturing our attention?

First of all, I think the trend is very real and probably underestimated right now. This is to me comparable to the moment for millennials where Selena Gomez was like, "I can't go on Instagram anymore." Like the biggest, most followed star. We're seeing like Emma Chamberlain, Jenna Ortega, all of these Gen Z stars saying, "I'm not gonna do TikTok anymore because it's too addictive." A couple things have come out of that. I think Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts benefit from that. It's funny. I have a younger brother. He's 22, and he told me like, "I had to delete TikTok because it's." too good, it's too addictive, I'm just going to watch Instagram Reels. And then I was telling him, but you're giving data to Instagram Reels that allows them to make that algorithm better, and soon enough there'll be no escape from these like hyper-curated short-form video algorithms. I do think like on a, on a higher level, maybe this ties back to what we were talking about with new consumer social. Things like BeReal to me are like a direct example of that kind of pushback. On BeReal, you go in, you take a picture, you have to take it in a 2-minute frame. Maybe you scroll through and leave an emoji on some of your friends' pictures, but you're not in the app for usually more than a few minutes a day. And so I think users find that to be kind of a more fulfilling or healthy way to engage with social media than ending up on a scrolling feed for hours at a time.

I'm trying to think of examples where there does seem to be this healthy level of interaction between people. One example that comes to mind is Strava to me, which is The app is not focused on just the nature of being social, like, hey, I'm gonna comment on your post and I'm gonna post, you know, this image of my life, but really fixated on an activity. So in Strava's case, running or cycling, and then there's social added onto that. The social app is not fixated on just trying to be social. It's fixated on something else. Are there other examples that you can think of where, you know, social is almost like a modifier instead of the core of the app itself?

It's a great question. I think there's this new wave of like what we would call kind of vertical social networks, which is where the network is focused on a specific interest and then ideally uses kind of real-world data and connections from that interest to build a product that kind of becomes a system of record for you in that activity. So let me explain. Strava is probably a great example where The product works best when you're actually going on bike rides and tracking them in the app and accumulating trophies. Goodreads is another kind of interesting and early example of this, where kind of the core unit of engagement is tracking your progress through a book. And maybe you'll meet friends, join book clubs, interact in that way on the app, but it's not the same sort of hyper-curated, influencer-first kind of perfect vision product. Another very interesting one— this didn't hit number 1 this year, but I'm watching it— there's this app for tracking Squishmallows. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They're this new, very popular type of stuffed animal that people actually go—

Oh, I know Squish. Yeah, I didn't realize they were called Squishmallows, but yes, I love those.

And people will go like literally diving through bins in Target to find these rare Squishmallows that they've never seen. Before. And I think this was mid or late November, but an app specifically to track your Squishmallow collection broke into the top 200 on the App Store, which was incredible. And the reviews, they were mostly from kind of teenagers or younger kids, maybe some adults with Squishmallow collections, were just saying it was like such a fun and rewarding way to both like express their interests, track their collection, and then also browse the collections of other users. Like, oh, this person, you know, found this Squishmallow that I've been searching for for years. So I do, all of this to say, I do see these kind of more verticalized social platforms as also a potential maybe source of respite away from these broad-based networks that really suck you in.

I'm so glad that you mentioned that example, and I just outed myself as a Squishmallow fan. But I mean, I think some of the themes that we've discussed keep coming up. And one of them is this idea that there are these trends from the past that reemerge. And this theme of like collecting Squishmallows and having, you know, having rare ones is like a classic in collectibles. And it's almost like exactly parallel to Beanie Babies. But it's fascinating to see how this digital element is coming to play because that didn't exist during that prior era. And just as a fun fact, if people Google, there was once a a lawsuit or a court case between a married couple because they couldn't decide who got the Beanie Babies. So anyway, let's, let's move on to a question that's related to what we're discussing here, which is just the interplay between digital and physical. So something that's fascinating about something like Strava is it's not just me on my phone clicking on, on the app and interacting with people. I'm doing some sort of physical activity. But I think there's maybe a further extension of that, which is not just solo interacting physically, but also how do these digital apps potentially impact the way that we engage with other people physically, right? Like kind of a cyclical nature to our digital and physical lives. So are there examples of apps that you've seen that our online behavior actually penetrates the physical world or changes it?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think like the first wave of subscription products Like the Calms, the Headspaces, the fitness apps, the nutrition apps, we're very much kind of single-player mode in helping you optimize yourself and your life and your habits. We've definitely seen kind of this rise of this new wave of apps focused around relationships. And really, you know, the app just needs you and one other person to work, but they'll prompt you with daily questions about the other person, things you want to talk about, basically ways to use this digital product to enhance this real-world relationship that's happening and to maybe make things easier or to strengthen or to improve these relationships. The most kind of basic version of this was the widget apps that went popular. Locket Widget, the founder, he's a— his name is Matt Moss. I think he's either a college student or a recent college graduate. He made it for his girlfriend. They were in a long-distance relationship and they wanted to see what each other was up to every And I think that use case is very strong of kind of how can we integrate technology more seamlessly to help us have better in-person or in real-life relationships. Another trend that we're seeing quite a lot of is apps and products, and especially platforms like TikTok, to be honest, driving traffic and driving engagement towards real-world businesses. So Gen Z, Yelp is not their favorite place to be. They've never really been big adopters of Yelp, and so they're looking for a new platform. Instagram is trying to build this. TikTok has kind of emerged as an early home for this, where people are discovering restaurants, places to go, things to do around them from TikTok, and then driving kind of similar to how TikTok can drive a wave of people to your app, it can drive a wave of people physically. To your storefront door, which is interesting. There's a food reviewer named Keith Lee. I think he has a couple million subscribers at this point. His account took off in November on TikTok, and he only reviews food from small businesses that he either picks up or kind of gets sent to him. And there's so many stories out there now if you Google him of businesses that were really struggling and he was able to generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for them in just 1 or 2 days through these food reviews that went viral and like changed the game.

So is the lesson there that these apps or companies with apps should really be working with these creators and being on a platform like TikTok? The reason I ask that is, you know, in some sense I feel like the answer is of course, but then I also have been on the other side as a marketer where I'm like, I'm working with these creators. We're not getting, you know, the hits that we're looking for. And so you hear of these viral sensations, but obviously there's like a lot of trial and error as well. So do you have any thoughts on like, is that just the move given the, the state we're in? Or do you have any thoughts on how else we can do that effectively?

I do think we've seen a lot more businesses, both in real life businesses and apps, invest in TikTok acquisition or trying to engineer TikTok virality over the last year. I think it's honestly very, very hard to do. Similar to how not every business needs an Instagram page with, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, I don't necessarily think every business needs, you know, a TikTok page with a huge following. If I were a small business, probably what I would look out for is kind of very organic ways to engage with maybe smaller creators who have audiences that are very kind of targeted to the type of people that I'm looking for. I would also just keep an eye on what platform seems to be winning on this next-gen Yelp vision that I think we believe is going to play out over the next 2 to 3 years. Will it be Instagram with their new searchable map? Will it be TikTok? Will it be something else entirely? Because there probably is an advantage if you're one of the early businesses to capitalize on that platform.

Something I want to ask you about before we close out is Something you mentioned in your thread was the difference in geography. And this is pretty front and center when you think about it. Like TikTok is obviously a Chinese company. You mentioned Temu, which is like your, your horse for the year in terms of what you're watching. And so there does seem to be more diversity, not just from China, in terms of the apps that are rising to the top versus, I believe it used to be more US concentrated apps that were trending in America. So any learnings from that, or why are we seeing that change in the matrix of apps rising to the top.

It plays out in the data too, as well as kind of just eyeballing the App Store charts and seeing where things come from. In 2021, of the new startups that kind of cracked the top number 1 for the first time, almost 85% of them were developed in the US. But in 2022, that had dropped to 45%. So we're seeing way more apps from China, from Russia, from Italy, really from all over. BeReal is originally from France, which is an interesting example, get mainstream adoption in the US. I think there's a couple trends that are driving this. One, a lot of the number ones, as we talked about this year, played on themes like widgets and avatars. And there's a lot of great international app studios and developers that kind of fast follow trends that are starting to emerge and release products that capitalize on that excitement. So, you know, when Locket took off in the US, LiveIn in China was released a few weeks later, and then kind of a wave of other widget apps came from all over the world, not just China or any specific market. TikTok, of course, is another huge player here. To me, it's kind of democratized the ability to go viral and to see success outside of your home market. There's one app that hit number 1 this year called TravelBoast, which is kind of an interactive map where you can visualize all the places you've been. It originated in Russia, but it ended up with 500 million views on TikTok because people globally were making videos about kind of their experiences and putting them on TravelBoast. And before, like a solo developer app coming out of Russia, like would have very little chance to kind of see mainstream US success. But because of TikTok, it did, which is really exciting.

That's a great point because in the past it was really hard for an individual developer To have the budget or the connections to get the kind of traction we're seeing today. But now that we have access to certain distribution channels like TikTok, we are seeing just maybe more apps come to play, but also their ability to rise more quickly, which feeds into what we said before, which makes it harder to stay at the top. But with that said, um, Olivia, this has been so great. I want to give you the opportunity, if there are any other examples, you've shared so many already of apps that you think are just worth knowing about or tell us something about the state of the App Store?

Absolutely. There's one that comes to mind that I've been fascinated with recently. It's actually in the gaming category. So it's an app called Subway Surfers that was first launched in 2012 out of a studio in the Nordics where a lot of gaming apps come from. Even just in 2014, people were publishing blog posts like Subway Surfers has so much longevity, it's been around for so long, which at the time was 2 years, and is still getting downloads. And now more than 10 years later, they just cracked the top 10 most downloaded apps worldwide. So not just in the US and not just for games, across both games and non-gaming apps. According to some of the independent data, they actually saw downloads grow 50% last year. So they got like 300 million downloads. They've now been downloaded by almost 40% of the population, which is crazy. Really? Wow. Maybe on multiple devices since they've been around for 10 years. They've made some really smart moves to kind of stay top of mind for that decade. They have this world tour strategy where the graphics and the location of the game changes every 2 weeks, which is really fun. They also have built great social media profiles. So they have 7 million subscribers on YouTube, another 6 million on TikTok. But this year I was trying to figure out what could have juiced them 50%. It turns out that especially Gen Z users, but all ages, have started kind of split-screening TikTok videos because people have such short attention spans. So they'll put the real video on top or they'll put, you know, the voiceover on top, and then they'll put a clip of someone playing Subway Surfers in the bottom of the video in the hopes that this will get the viewer to kind of stop and stay engaged and stay focused on the video instead of just like scrolling away.

That's so funny. I've seen a couple examples of this, as you said, because people have short attention spans. I don't know if they're using Subway Surfers, but there's also these examples of people who are trying to get around copyright infringement. So not duplicating a video, but then they'll just on the side of a video have like a game video playing or something like that.

Yes, exactly.

And so, yeah, I mean, people are getting so creative these days, but I think it's so interesting, these examples where an app is used in ways that the developers didn't even intend.

Yeah, no, and it's the downstream implications of it are also interesting in terms of what it continues to do to our attention span and kind of what we expect from media. There was this meme that came out that was like, you know, the next generation, Gen Alpha, is gonna riot when they go to the movie theaters and Subway Surfers isn't playing on the bottom half of the screen. Like, they're not going to be able to focus for that long. I don't know if that's true exactly, but I do think it'll be very interesting to track whether more videos or fewer videos end up doing that in the coming year.

It's a great point, this idea of reducing attention spans and what comes next. Because if you think about it, it used to be like you read a 10-minute-long article, people got bored of that. Then you watched a 5-minute YouTube video, people got bored of that. Then you had an image on Instagram and then a short clip that's 30 seconds. And then even that wasn't enough. It's like, okay, within the short clip, we're going to speed up the music, we're going to cut the screen. And it's like, what comes next? We'll see how short you can get this. We'll see. We'll see, I guess. I want to end off with a fun little exercise because I feel like I've learned a lot in this conversation. There's so many themes, so many ideas. If someone's looking to create an app, maybe you can copy from something that you see on desktop. Maybe you can pay attention to the technology changes happening on the iPhone. Maybe you can look to what's happening in other countries and duplicate them here. And there are a few others that we've discussed. But if you, Olivia, having maybe one of the best understandings of what's happening in this App Store, if you were tasked tomorrow to go and build an app that you wanted to get to number 1, what would you do? What would you think about?

Great question. You know, I have to say, and this might be due to personal interest, but there's this fascinating trend around dog ownership. And dogs, especially for young people, becoming the new children because people are having kids later or having fewer kids. They're spending more money on their dogs than ever before. And there are not that many kind of digital-first pet brands. So I would probably develop some sort of app around dog or pet ownership where you were able to show off or track or keep an eye on your pet in a creative or interesting way. I think the core of it would be that it generates some sort of shareable asset. That then you could post across Instagram and Twitter and TikTok and show everyone how cute your dog is. So I think I need— I might be in the idea maze on this idea for a little while longer, but there's hopefully something there.

There's something there because to your point, pets have been taking off for years. It's, you know, as some people say, the recession-proof industry. If you look at the pet industry growth relative to many other things like Typically you'll see like, you know, 2008 show up in, in sales. Pets is just like this straight line upwards. Um, and then yes, people love talking about their pets, sharing pictures of their pets, looking at other pictures of pets. And so we talked about the need for some sort of sharing element or way to notify other people that you're on this app. And so there is something there, maybe like, oh God, this is, this is so silly because people, people say this as a trope, but like Instagram for pets, or I don't know, just something where the pet is the, is the— No, I love that.

Yeah.

Influencer, if that makes sense.

Because you feel bad posting, you know, your whole Instagram feed being pictures of your pets. So then it's like, do you do what I did and make a separate Instagram account for your dog? Or do you not have kind of the attention for that? Which I think is most people. My sister and I have joked for probably the past 10 years that if we did ever start a business, it would be very fun, like how those zoos have livestreams where you can watch the animals and like see what they're doing throughout the day. Someone should create that but for puppies. Where you can just see cute puppies running around all day. Maybe that'll just be a genre on TikTok, but I think it'd be pretty popular.

I know we're in that idea maze where we're like, is it a feature or a product? Um, you know, it's speaking of maybe a viral app that could be created, maybe it already exists, but that I don't think would last long is the, um, you know how people say that people buy pets that look like them or dogs specifically? An app that you upload your 2 pictures and then it tells you You're like 61% like your dog and someone else is like, oh, you're 99%. Um, I think that could be pretty funny.

You have something there. I'm serious. I would download that in a heartbeat. That could be a number one for 2023.

A very short-lived 2023 app. All right. Well, if someone wants to build that, go right ahead. Um, Olivia, this was amazing. I feel like hopefully listeners have so many more angles that they can think about the App Store and think about whether they want to create within it or at least understand the different apps that we're downloading, because to your point earlier, they really do represent our behavior, what we want to engage with, what we're paying attention to. So thank you so much for going through this, and we will definitely have to do another episode once we get the 2023 data.

Amazing. I can't wait. Thanks so much for having me. This was very fun.

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