Former Meta manager (formerly Facebook ) Nikita Beer launched a new app called Gas, which overtook giant competitors like Instagram, Twitter and others. According to Wall Street Journal, Gas is «the most popular application right now» and platform 1 in the app store.
One week after the official launch, the platform went viral mostly among high school students, and the application was only available for download in 12 states. The name of the platform is inspired by the idea that users can leave anonymous compliments to «cheer up someone» like other anonymous social networking platforms such as Yik Yak, NGL and others.
But then how is it different? First, the Gas team targeted teenagers or high school students by creating an Instagram account that included the user name of the high school they attended. higher education institutions. Luke Sophinos, CEO and founder of CourseKeyEDU, said that Bir’s team used the old-fashioned «velvet rope» approach, initially not accepting any student requests. In other words, the app changes the biography of the same account, say, in Instagram, and redirects teenagers to Gas installation, saying, look who likes you» . As the situation escalated rapidly, Gag began adding thousands of users – not a day or a week – at 30,000 per hour.
The gas was created by Nikita Bir in August 2022. Before that, he got a job on Facebook (now Meta) thanks to a developed application called tbh (abbreviation «honestly»). The app attracted money from Greylock Partners and Founders Fund, receiving more than 5 million users by the time Facebook was purchased in 2017.
Nevertheless, the founder says that the gas is a reference to the expression «to fill someone with gas» or to increase his self-confidence. Bear claims that with a team of four, he made $1 million in ten days. The app accesses the user’s location so that it can select a high school and add classmates to see which compliments are being given. However, the application does not allow users to communicate or send messages to each other.
Gas founder Bir recently announced that the team was the target of two DoS attacks, with several IP addresses coming from China. He said that after the investigation, the application team discovered that the «human trafficking prank» was carried out by an organization from China. «Our data shows that users connected from China when the app just started to grow and the first fake review was published the same day», – he said, adding that despite rumors, more than a third of teenagers in the US downloaded Gas.
Sophinos said that he suspected that this move might have been made by his rival on social networks TikTok. He said that new statements were made by teenagers on other platforms, such as SnapChat and TikTok, adding that people used gas to kidnap minors. In response, local media, police departments and officials have begun to issue statements calling on parents to restrict the use of the app to children.
