The newly-launched Belgian social media app WeScoop saw 350,000 users sign up in its first three weeks, placing the app at the top of the social media charts in Europe, RTBF reports.
"This is the best launch for a social network, even better than Instagram in 2010," co-founder Dorian Wery told RTBF.
The app, which the creators describe as a crossover between Snapchat, Instagram and Tinder, gathered over 15,000 new users per day after its release. The traffic was five times more than the developers had expected, leading to bugs and unmoderated content, of sexual or violent nature, polluting the platform.
"We disappeared from the Apple Store for a few weeks," Dorian Wery told RTBF. The application was reinstated after more content moderation was put in place.
WeScoop creators Dorian Wery and Igor Toussaint hail from the Belgian city of Gerpinnes (Hainaut) and say that they want their app to have a greater degree of freedom than other apps. The app has also a points system, called 'ScoopCoins', which users obtain by using the app and can then use to customise their profile.
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Experts say that 350,000 users is a good start, but not much in the vast landscape of social media apps.
"We can't even count the number of social networks that exist today. It is hard to carve out a place for yourself among the biggest. It is a global market and you have to compete with platforms that have billions of users," EPHEC professor and social media expert Mateusz Kukulka told RTBF.
