Moore: Old app Talking Ben the Dog hit #1 via YouTuber meme
Olivia Moore · The State of Apps with Olivia Moore · Feb 9, 2023 · at 15:12
Olivia Moore, consumer partner at a16z, discusses organic user acquisition and unplanned viral explosions in the App Store during 2022.
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“One of the top apps this year was called Talking Ben the dog, which is a kid's 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 fifteen 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 one again after being released, you know, years and years ago by an app studio who made it for a completely different use case than where it actually took off.”
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