The explosion in GG downloads followed the renaming of the app as “Telegram with Gems” to exploit app store search rankings.
This is why GG for iOS has a lot more users compared to Android. GG ranks significantly higher in the Apple App Store when searching for “Telegram”.
100k downloads is paraded around as if it’s indicative of the app’s merit beyond being a Telegram clone. But the rise in downloads appears to be entirely the result of this simple SEO trick.
What is troubling is that the recent rise in downloads did not produce a large bump in social media activity.
This is what you’d expect if new users are downloading GG to get on the Telegram network, and have no interest or knowledge of GG’s unique features.
Getting downloads, through any means, is certainly an important step for this project. But the real work is developing GG's promised services and convincing people to use them.
After 15 months, GG's standout features are underwhelming to say the least, and we’ve been told that continued development is now dependent on acquiring more VC money... that’s not even intended for the GG project.
Regularly posting download counts is a distraction to mask the shortcomings of any meaningful work towards building the AE as described in the whitepaper.
Owners of the Telegram network have more to celebrate from our 100k downloads than GG supporters. It'll be the same story when we hit 200k.
That is a great take. It's interesting to get a point of view I never thought of. As I understand, Magma has a controlling interest in the company, not the cryptocurrency which is why Daniel seems to be gravitating away from the Gems project, and instead focusing more on Paykey. Paykey, as they see it will simply be more profitable. It will work like Visa and Mastercard, siphoning off 0.5% of each transaction and is not exclusive to getgems, the cryptocurrency.
Although this is disappointing for gems holders, I don't necessarily think David and his team are to blame. The vc's that back getgems probably wanted a better product, something more profitable, whatever. I am gussing the vc's are putting pressure on the gems team to change directions, because the cryptocurrency is not a moneymaker. I can't invest. If things change or getgems provides a service or feature I'm currently not aware of I will.
With that being said though, I'd love to be proved wrong.