I had taken a break reporting on Pokémon GO simply because I didn't think the statistics could get any more staggering. Clearly I was wrong! Pokémon GO isn't going to topple Facebook's massive user base any time soon, but it has snagged quite the user engagement victory. On a daily basis, the insanely popular app from Niantic Labs is being used twice as much as the Facebook app on Android. This is honestly something I thought would be inconceivable in a world where we're tethered to our phones and addicted to social media updates.
A new report gathered from 7Park Data -- pulled from a multi-million panel of anonymous U.S. Android users -- shows that during its first week, Pokémon GO users spent 75 minutes per day playing, versus only 35 minutes on the Facebook app. Beyond that, there's another statistic that may give YouTube and Snapchat executives pause. When comparing daily usage the week before and the week after Pokémon GO's release, 7Park Data discovered that Niantic's hit caused daily usage for said apps to drop by 9% and 18%, respectively.
Interestingly, daily time spent on Facebook since Pokémon GO launched has actually increased by two minutes (from 33 minutes to 35 minutes). That's no surprise! I'm sure you've noticed the heavy influx of posts celebrating the capture of digital creatures on your feed.
The takeaway? We're spending 4.1% more time on our smartphones since Pokémon GO was released, but it's at the expense of apps like YouTube and Snapchat. Spending two minutes less per day in popular apps like that may seem inconsequential, but projected outward, globally, across both iOS and Android -- and taking into account that Pokémon GO just launched in Japan -- that could mean considerable advertising revenue is being lost. And I'm sure these apps aren't the only casualties.
READ MORE: How to use Pokémon GO to lure more customers to your local business
Speaking of first week accomplishments, here's another incredible piece of data. Apple tells TechCrunch that Pokémon GO has the most first-week downloads since Apple launched their iOS app store eight years ago. That's one for the record books.
My colleague David Thier recently questioned whether Pokémon GO was a fad, or if it would remain a fixture of our daily lives for the foreseeable future. It's difficult to answer that with any certainty, but the hype train certainly isn't putting on the brakes any time soon.
