It has only been five days since its North American launch, but Pokemon Go is already slated to be one of the biggest social networks in history. While users-slash-players of the augmented reality game were somewhat prepared for the bugs and server issues that typically plagued such a massive public response to an online entity, the game itself is also already at the center of other issues.
Sure, the game has already been installed on 5.16 percent of all Android devices—and remember, its not even the end of the first week—and experts expect this number will only continue to grow. These are the early adopters, the die hard Pokemon fans; truly more players will join the fray as the dust settles and comprehensive reviews weigh out the pluses and minuses.
Pokemon Go, Who is Using it?
And yes, 5.16 percent is a lot of people. Like A LOT. To give you a little perspective, Pokemon Go has been installed on twice as many Android devices as the extremely popular hookup/dating app Tinder. Of course, installations do not necessarily detail an apps true market penetration; for that we need to look at daily active users. And while Pokemon Go has not yet reached this type of market penetration in line with Twitter, its meteoric rise should reach these numbers. As of this week. Twitter hovers just above 3.5 percent active daily user rate—Pokemon Go’s daily active user rate is currently around 3 percent.
In fact, according to SimilarWeb’s Joseph Schwartz, “Over 60 percent of those who have downloaded the app in the US are using it daily, meaning around 3 percent of the entire US Android population are using the app. This metric […] has put Pokemon Go neck and neck with Twitter, and in a few more days, Pokemon Go will likely have more Daily Active Users than the well-established social network.”
Perhaps more importantly—and particularly because this is a game and not an “app”—the average Pokemon Go user spends at least 43 minutes a day hunting for Pikachu (et al). That’s more than daily use for social media networks like WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.
Obviously it can easily be expected that Pokemon Go downloads will continue to increase over the next several days into the next few weeks. The rate will decline, of course, but we will probably see a major jump in downloads again when the app launches in Europe and Asia, hopefully over the next few days.
