In January, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone released Jelly, a crowdsourcing service blending search, Q&A and photo-sharing into a single app. The launch of the social app came with much fanfare. Upon release, Jelly hit No. 15 in the ‘Social Networking’ category and two weeks later announced Series B funding from Greylock Partners and Spark Capital. Prominent celebrities including Bono and Al Gore previously participated in Jelly’s 2013 Series A round.
But it appears the initial frenzy around Jelly was short-lived, at least in the App Store rankings. Just several weeks after launch, we noticed that Jelly had plummeted in the App Store rankings, falling out of the top 1000 overall apps by the start of February.
Interestingly, the app was able to climb back and – after a March 31 update which added a new map-based feature – Jelly had returned to the top 15 in the ‘Social Networking’ category by April 2nd. But again, the momentum was short-lived. The app also launched a ‘Replies’ feature in mid-June, which does not look like it has had any noticeable effect on its rank. As of July 5, Jelly ranks outside of the top 300 apps in the ‘Social Networking’ category and has not ranked in the top 1000 overall apps since May 19.
Below is the App Store rank chart for Jelly since its iOS launch (taken directly from the company’s Performance Metrics tab). Jelly highlights, despite having a celebrity founder and backers, the difficulty of consistently strong performance in the App Store.
