Flappy Bird, the Internet sensation that hit the top charts on every app story around 2014, developed by Dong Nguyen.

If you’re as old as me, then you must remember Flappy Bird. For a brief moment in time, it was all everyone was talking about.

This mobile game was, and still is, ultra-easy to play: there was a bird flying on your screen, and you had to control through a side-scrolling map by tapping the screen. The problem? It was quite addicting.

So addicting that copycat games were popping up everywhere, trying to replicate the success of it.

But how successful was it then? Well, this much:

• Advertising revenue equivalent to $18m per year on an annualised basis;

• 50 million downloads by January 2014;

• 68,000 reviews in app stores;

• No. 1 free game in app stores in 53 countries;

• Flappy Bird founder's Twitter account got 148k followers.

The owner also said that, at its height, Flappy Bird was making $50k a day in in-app advertisements. After this “gold rush”, the game was taken down from the app stores. Dong claims that he felt guilt over what he considered to be its addictive nature and overuse (people were selling their actual smartphones with Flappy Bird installed on them, insane).

Flappy Bird

It is much harder today to get such levels of virality in a product. Still, it’s not impossible. If you think you have the best thing ever and feel that the problem is that not enough people are looking at it, then check this post from Lenny. You might get some ideas on how to kickstart your growth path.

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