Muse’s profile has been fueled by Meta’s promotion of the AI app at its annual developer conference this week, as well as strong early reviews praising its sleek design and advanced AI model under the hood.
As of the beginning of the week, Muse had more than 2.5 million downloads since its launch on September 8th. The app has now been downloaded more than 3.4 million times, according to the latest estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
Install numbers are as of the company’s estimates Thursday and may lag actual deployments.
That means Muse hasn’t captured the full impact of the big push it received this week at the Meta Connect conference. There, the social network company announced a variety of upcoming features for its new AI app, including video chat with Muse avatars, support for using computers on Mac, a dedicated email address, more partners and connectors, and plans to integrate smart glasses.
Estimates from other market intelligence firms show that Muse has strong traction as well, although the numbers vary widely. For example, Muse has had 4.3 million total downloads to date, according to Apptopia. (Muse is currently available only in the US and Canada). It is estimated that 2.6 million of those were on iOS.
Meanwhile, another company, Appfigures, said Muse had about 2.3 million installs as of Thursday, split almost evenly between iOS and Android.
Sensor Tower also provides visibility into daily active users of the Muse app after the Meta Connect conference. On Wednesday, after the event ended, that number was found to have increased by 27%.
Ahead of the conference, Muse is already off to a strong start. The app reached an estimated 2.8 million downloads in its first two weeks on the app store, according to Sensor Tower. During that period (September 8 to September 17), downloads of the Muse app increased by an average of 55% per day. For comparison, ChatGPT saw an average daily download increase of 24% in the first 10 days after release. Meanwhile, download growth for Claude and Grok declined during their respective releases.
On Friday, September 18th, Muse rose to the top of the US App Store and has maintained that ranking ever since. It also reached the top spot on the Google Play Store on September 19th, where it still remains.
So far, much of Muse’s traction has been organic, but the app has also benefited from the same cross-platform promotion that helped one of Meta’s newest social apps, Instagram Threads, surpass 500 million monthly active users. In other words, Meta is marketing the app to existing Facebook and Instagram users.
But as Meta’s head of Threads, Connor Hayes, recently told Business Insider, Meta’s approach to marketing Muse is different than its approach to Threads. Threads also handles user-generated content that Meta can create tailored to users’ interests when running cross-promotions, but the trick for Muse is to build promotion units that can showcase what the AI agent can do for users, based on Meta’s understanding of what is specifically useful and helpful to users.
According to Sensor Tower data, Meta ran its own ads promoting Muse on September 9, the day after Muse’s launch. Within 10 days, Muse received the majority of its own advertising promotions across Meta’s properties, with promotions on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta also began promoting Muse on mobile ad networks and other social networks such as Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube.
By Tuesday, Sept. 22, Muse ranked among the top 10 brands in ad spending, according to Sensor Tower.
Still, Muse’s growth cannot be explained solely by Meta’s marketing efforts. Ads promoting the app accounted for only 6% of ad impressions from launch to September 19th.
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