{"id":99323,"date":"2025-10-24T21:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T21:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/99323\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T21:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T21:07:12","slug":"openai-has-an-unexpected-challenger-in-app-store-daves-hot-chicken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/99323\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI Has an Unexpected Challenger in App Store: Dave’s Hot Chicken"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the tech and finance world continues to debate whether we’re in an AI bubble<\/a>, one thing is for sure: People love AI!<\/p>\n

For proof, like no further than Apple’s App Store<\/a>, where OpenAI’s ChatGPT app and its Sora video spinoff are atop the “free app” rankings, and \u2026<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

A screenshot of Apple’s iOS app store on October 24 shows a surprising entrant at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

Apple<\/p>\n

Whoops? So maybe we love AI, but we love fried chicken more?<\/p>\n

Answer: We love \u2014 or are at least interested in \u2014 both things. But the reason Dave’s Hot Chicken<\/a> is currently at the top of App Store rankings \u2014 above Sora and ChatGPT \u2014 is really simple: This week, the fast food chain, which counted Drake as an early investor, gave away free sandwiches to anyone who used the app to order the sandwiches.<\/p>\n

Cue lots of downloads, lots of press coverage<\/a>, and funny scenes like this.<\/p>\n

I’m not personally a big Dave’s fan. But at least one of my kids loves it, so I’ve been spending a lot of money on the hot chicken<\/a> chain. I’m not saying that’s the reason the company was sold in a deal that valued it at $1 billion<\/a> earlier this year. But it didn’t hurt?<\/p>\n

But this is not a story about my discretionary spending. It’s really a story about how Apple’s App Store rankings work. Because while it’s reasonable to think that the rankings are measuring sheer popularity, that’s not the case: They are generally measuring recent velocity of downloads. (Apple doesn’t disclose its formula publicly, but developers have been making informed guesses about this for some time<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Related stories<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n

So a hot new app that’s getting a flurry of downloads will rocket to the top \u2014 but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay there.<\/p>\n

If you see a top app stay at the top of the app rankings over an extended period of time \u2014 like ChatGPT<\/a> has \u2014 then you’re likely seeing an app that has a lot of new downloads and a lot of overall downloads. That is a truly popular app.<\/p>\n

But it also means you should exercise caution when a buzzy new app comes out and rockets to the top of the charts, as Sora has done in recent weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Maybe that indicates that lots of people are using Sora<\/a> all the time. But it could also mean that a lot of people are hearing about Sora \u2014 which is still technically limited to users who have invites \u2014 and are checking it out.<\/p>\n

Whether they’re sticking around is another matter, and we won’t know about that for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the tech and finance world continues to debate whether we’re in an AI bubble, one thing is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-99323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}