Iceland trivia app QuizUp passes 20 million users in 5 languages
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Active Users
Stashed in: Mobile!, Candy Crush!, Sequoia, For Milo, Snapchat, Iceland, Nordic!, For Will, Iceland
Holy smokes, this app is huge and committed to staying in Iceland:
Trivia app QuizUp is making good on its global expansion plans, adding new languages and geo-specific content to go along with it. That effort comes as the company passed 20 million users, with most of its growth coming from international users.
The QuizUp app, which was created by Icelandic startup Plain Vanilla Games, had been English-language only until very recently, when the company added support for German, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Not only has it localized a large number of its existing trivia categories, but it’s also launched a large number of region- or language-specific topics for non-English speakers.
In fact, the amount of content the company has produced a ton of new content for specific local audiences, as opposed to what’s seen by its entire international audience. It’s added 350 topics for local audiences over the past few months, as opposed to 150 topics for its entire global user base.
In addition to more local and foreign-language trivia content, its user growth has no doubt been helped by its launch on new platforms, including the iPad and Android (which, in case you didn’t know, has a lot of users outside the U.S.).
Not surprisingly, user growth has skewed heavily international over the past two months as a result. International sign-ups are beating those in the U.S. two-to-one. The number of games played by international users in that time is 335.5 million, compared to 216 million in the U.S.
The QuizUp team isn’t stopping there; with five languages under its belt, Plain Vanilla Games hopes to add five more over the course of the next few months. That includes localizing the app for Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese users.
While the company is expanding the number of questions and topics that are available across multiple new languages, Plain Vanilla is firmly committed to keeping its headquarters in Iceland. From there it manages all the localization, editing and management of trivia topics and questions, according to Viggo Jonsson, VP of Business Development at Plain Vanilla Games.
Plain Vanilla Games has raised $27 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, with participation from all existing investors, including Tencent, Greycroft Partners, IDG Ventures, BOLDstart Ventures, CrunchFund (owned by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington) and MESA+.
This was a company that spent years working before building this trivia app that took off.
And now it's bigger than Snapchat, and will one day be bigger than Candy Crush.
Good for them!
2:30 PM Jun 11 2014