Tango is a relatively new instant messaging app (IM for short). Being a messaging app, it automatically falls in the same category as Kakao, WeChat and Whatsapp, who are all considered to be the industry leading players. However, while the rest of the world seems to be dominated by these bigger names, Tango seems to have found its niche in the face of Western audience.
This internet based messaging app is growing very fast. Their developers have recently revealed some of the factors that led to their viral growth. The main reason, as it turns out, was because of their built in game, Road Riot, which has already surpassed one million active users who play this game every day.
This U.S. based company has benefited heavily from a $215 million investment (which was done by the online retailer Alibaba) which allowed them to focus on introducing games to their application. Funny fact: Facebook was also assisted by a company called Zynga games, which was one of the reasons for its success. It was because of games such as Farmville and Mafia wars the users would come back to the site numerous times during a day. These became their favorite games. It seems like Tango is aiming to go in a similar direction.
Now I would like to talk a little bit about the game at hand. Road Riot was originally created as a tribute of sorts to the one and only Spy Hunter. If you do not know what Spy Hunter is, just look it up in Google. The resulting game became a huge success and was downloaded more than 10 million times already. However, it is not the number of downloads that determine the ultimate success (or failure) of the game, but it’s the number of active users who log in every day. This game has spiked in popularity during the US Labor day. During that day it reached a number 6 spot in the Google Play store in the United States.
Tango has been actively encouraging its users to “push” the games that they have available and integrate them with their social media, aiming to access the 250 million potential users. The way they do that is by using push notifications and alerts (as well as invites, game updates and gifts). All of these seemingly little things result in recognition for the company. Nowadays, they have taken it a step further and introduced the so called Global Games Fund which has an enormous investment of $25 million. Of course, it has attracted the people as well as over 100 developers who all took interest in the company and presented their products and ideas.
In regards to game publishing; Tango’s vice president said that they always on the lookout for the possibilities to form a strong relationship with developers. Their game, Road Riot, is a good example of the potential success they could achieve together, using their platform. He also said that they are planning to produce more viral games that will keep people interested and add value to their products.