Snapchat's custom-emoji creator is now the fastest-growing app in the US

pulse

March 24, 2017 2:17 PM

Bitmoji, Snapchat's app for sending personalized emojis to friends and family, is now the fastest-growing app in the US.

null

Bitmoji, the personalized-emoji app owned by Snapchat, is the fastest-growing app in the US.

That's according to the measurement and analytics firm comScore, which ranked the 11 fast-growing apps from December 2014 to December 2016, though it measured Bitmoji's growth only since February 2015.

In terms of unique visitors over 18, comScore found that Bitmoji's growth had skyrocketed in the past two years: Bitmoji is up 5,210% since 2015.

Bitmoji's rapid growth isn't unexpected, since the app is consistently among the top 10 free apps in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, and it dropped only to No. 2 from No. 1 in Apple's top free-apps chart.

Snapchat purchased Bitstrips, Bitmoji's parent company, in March of last year for more than $100 million. Bitstrips started as a way to make personalized comics back in 2007, but it pivoted to creating cartoon avatars in addition to the full comic strips. The Bitmoji app allows users to customize an emoji that looks like them and respond with it in messages.

Snapchat officially integrated Bitmoji into its own app in July, letting users link the Bitmoji app to their Snapchat account and send personalized Bitmojis to friends in chat or place them on top of messages like Snapchat's other stickers and standard emojis.

Bitmoji also expanded beyond mobile in February, adding a Chrome extension that allows users to send Bitmojis in emails, paste them in Google Docs, and more.

pulse