Controversy must be great for business. Face-altering entertainment app FaceApp, which claims rights to your face for the privilege of aging you, changing your look, or making you look younger, is blowing up. John Koetsier reports on Forbes.
How fast? Over 500% in just the last six days.
According to Apptopia data, FaceApp downloads have increased 561% over the last 30 days. But the growth curve doesn’t actually start until July 12, just six days ago.
Related: FaceApp Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People’s Faces And Names
And that’s only in the U.S. on iPhone. In the UK, FaceApp increased its iOS app download rate 570%. In privacy-sensitive Germany, 364%. And in Saudi Arabia FaceApp grew an astonishing 1631% on a relatively small base. On Android, FaceApp has a similar growth curve, but the top countries are Brazil, where the app added 764,000 new users for a 248% growth rate, and Russia, where FaceApp grew just 76%, but added 372,000 new users. Egypt was its fastest-growing market on Android, with a 478% growth rate.
According to the report by John Koetsier on Forbes, the time frame correlates with FaceApp’s explosion on social media. While the app has been around for some time, the last week has seen thousands of shares on Facebook and other social media outlets.
While there are certainly privacy concerns with the app — mostly due to a much-too-aggressive terms of service — a Forbes investigation has shown that customer pictures are stored on Amazon servers in the U.S.
In other words, the Kremlin doesn’t have your biometrics just yet, even though FaceApp is owned by a Russian company.
One thing is clear: the new influx of downloads has had a massive impact on FaceApp’s revenue. According to Apptopia, the Android version of FaceApp is now making over $19,000 each day. The iOS version is making just over $70,000/day, about 42% of it in the U.S.
Apparently the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is correct, at least in the financial sense.