Glance, which serves media content, news, and casual games on the lock screen of Android-powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today.
The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their first 100 million daily active users, said Naveen Tewari, founder and chief executive of InMobi Group, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Glance uses AI to offer personalized experience to its users. The service replaces the otherwise empty lock screen with locally relevant news, stories, and casual games. Late last year, InMobi acquired Roposo, a Gurgaon-headquartered startup, that has enabled it to introduce short-form videos on the platform.
“Introducing short-form videos and games on Glance has helped us increase the engagement level. About 25% of our users actively play games on Glance,” said Tewari. The firm is now working to make these short-form videos available in many local languages. (You can also try the service on your mobile web browser.)
In addition to offering a standalone app on Google Play Store, Glance ships pre-installed on several smartphone models. InMobi Group maintains tie-ups with nearly every top Android smartphone vendor including Xiaomi, the top player in India, and Samsung.
But users can easily disable the service, said Tewari, adding that the 100 million users the firm is reporting today are those who consciously engage with content on Glance. Users spend about 25 minutes consuming content on Glance each day, he said.
Sitting on the lock screen, perhaps the most coveted real estate on a smartphone to reach a user, has allowed Glance to deliver any information to a very large number of users in a short time. Tewari said more than 50 million users reacted to Glance informing them about India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech last month surrounding the lockdown in the country, for instance.
“We are not just a short-form video platform. We are not just a gaming platform nor one that serves just news. Given where we sit, we cater to nearly everything that is out there across the world. So everyone has something to consume,” he said.
The service is currently available in India, its biggest market with more than 80 million users, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Tewari said the firm plans to roll out Glance across the globe in the next two years.
Glance, which raised $45 million last year, is currently not monetizing its users. Tewari said he has experimented with a few ideas, but won’t make any push on this front for another one to two quarters.
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