Pokemon Go’s Augment Reality Gaming Adventure Tramples Twitter And Facebook In User Engagement
Who cares about the latest Twitter status or Instagram pics, when you could be catching Pikachus? According to a recent survey, many mobile users are thinking along these same lines. The average iPhone user spent thirty three minutes on Pokémon GO on Monday, July 11th.
Pokémon GO is a location-based augmented reality mobile game, developed by Niantic, published by The Pokémon Company, and is part of the Pokémon franchise. The game allows players to capture, battle, and train virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world via GPS. At level five, the player is able to battle at a Pokémon gym and join one of three teams.
The average iPhone users only spent twenty two minutes using Facebook, the second most popular app on July 11th. Users preferred Haunters and Ghastly's instead of the Snapchat ghost. The third most popular app only received an average of eighteen minutes of attention.
Although Pokémon GO surpassed the popularity of social media apps, it was less successful than other mobile games. The average user spent nearly two hours playing Game of War and forty-three minutes playing Candy Crush.
It is important to note that the survey cited here examined iPhone users only. Pokémon GO is currently the most popular mobile game ever, with twenty-one million downloads on both iOS and Android platforms. By July 8th, just two days after its launch, Pokémon GO was installed on more than 5% of all the Android devices in the United States. More mobile users were swiping Pokeballs than profiles on Tinder. Web searches for “Pokémon GO” were more popular than web searches for “porn”. That’s right -- there were more people looking for Jigglypuff than jiggly...other things.
The game’s popularity is likely to rise as it becomes available in more countries. Pokémon GO is currently available on iOS and Android in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany.
