Last week, a new app climbed to the top of the US App Store chart, pushing BeReal and TikTok down. The popularity of the app, which is only useful for young people in a few states in the US, is amazing enough.
We’re talking about Gas, an anonymous chat app designed for teenagers and young adults who are too shy to talk to others and want to hide behind a screen instead. It belongs to the creator of tbh, which was acquired by Facebook and then shut down a few months later, says AppTractor.
By Tuesday, AppFigures estimated that one million people had downloaded Gas. The app is only available in the US and only on the App Store, which severely limits its availability. Also a limitation of its coverage is that it only works in a small number of states, so a million is a good number.
Why? For now, this is unknown, probably to warm up the virality. But the creators promised that they would soon expand the use of Gas.
NIX Solutions notes that what’s really interesting about Gas is that Gas seems to already have an income model and actual income. AppFigures estimates so far show that these millions of users have generated almost $100,000 in net revenue for Gas. The income comes from an in-app purchase called god mode, which costs $6.99 per week.