A New App 'Explodes' Out Of Spite

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Nikita Bier is a master at creating viral social apps. He is the creator of tbh and Gas. Both apps went viral really quickly and got acquired by giants in the field, Facebook and Discord respectively.

Tbh was an anonymous social media app for high school students launched in 2017, acquired by Facebook, and shut down in 2018.

Gas was the successor to tbh - another anonymous social media app targeted at high schoolers - launched in 2022. It became the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store in October 2022. In November 2022, it had nearly 1 million active users. Gas was acquired by Discord in January 2023 and shut down in November 2023.

So that’s Nikita’s formula - super viral social sold to a giant for a massive fee.

And it looks like he’s going to do it again with Explode.

A new app only for iMessage that lets you send messages that explode (get deleted with an explosion) after some time.

This is basically the same principle as Snapchat. The major difference here is Explode makes use of all the real estate that iOS can provide on an iPhone.

Here is the origin story:

Explode is going viral and currently ranked #49 in Utilities on the App Store.

The reviews aren’t all positive with some users complaining about how the app occupies their lock screens with the users having no option other than to open the message:

The app is free to download but users can sign up to Explode+ for $39.99 per year or $7.99 per month to unlock all features.

Paid users receive screenshot alerts, can block screenshots altogether, can replay photos that they previously sent, and can lock photo viewing after sending them.

At the moment, the app is only available in the USA and other countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Italy.

At the time of writing, the app is rated a not-so-pleasing 3.6 stars on the App Store.

But Nikita has probably already succeeded in his mission (at least partially). He has again created a viral social app. The only step left is to make it bigger before selling it for millions again.

Will he be third time lucky?

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