Pokémon GO Is Already Bigger Than Tinder

Pokémon GO Is Already Bigger Than Tinder

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, only safety and physiological comfort are more important than love in our search for self-fulfilment. Maslow was wrong. A stronger driving force than love, apparently, is the need to catch ’em all, seeing how Pokémon GO has already been installed more times after a week than Tinder in five years.

According to data from SimilarWeb, Pokémon GO has already been installed on about five per cent of Android smartphones, compared to Tinder on about two per cent. Clearly, Pokémon fulfils a basic human need.

Tinder isn’t the only stalwart app that Pokémon is blowing out of the water. Pokémon GO is coming for Twitter too, and its three per cent of daily active users on Android (as of Saturday) is set to overtake the 3.5 per cent of daily active users on Twitter, if it hasn’t already. Let’s not forget that Twitter has been around for a decade, while most of the world was completely unaware of Pokémon GO two weeks ago.

The data on iPhones is a little less specific, but Pokémon GO has predictably topped the Apple app store as well, sending Nintendo stock surging. Pokémon GO is clearly a bona fide fad. People are coming across dead bodies while playing and trying to hack the app with drones, but that’s small fish. You know you’ve made it when robbers decide to use your app to lure victims.

Of course, the precise fact that this is a fad means that the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. I’ll be surprised if Pokémon GO still has more daily active users than Twitter once it, too, has been around for a decade.

But until then, is it really any surprise that catching Pokémon in the real world is such a delight? Augmented reality that makes you exercise and battle monsters and sends you to a strip club? Swipe right, please.

[SimilarWeb via Business Insider]


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