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Trivia Crack: The app with 100M players and a game show

Emma Hinchliffe
USA TODAY
To play Trivia Crack, users spin a wheel that determines each question.

Search "Trivia Crack" on Twitter, and you'll find a common refrain: "I learn more on Trivia Crack than in school."

The trivia game that initially gained popularity with high school and college students has swept the app charts to stay number 1 for over 60 days, beating Draw Something's 38-day record. With 100 million users worldwide and 7.6 downloads per second, the app doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon.

So what makes Trivia Crack so popular?

The game, released by Argentina-based gaming company Etermax, pairs players with a Facebook friend or a random opponent to compete in trivia categories covering sports, science, history, geography, entertainment and art. But the key is that all trivia questions are uploaded by users, and the questions you see depend on where you're playing the game.

Anyone playing the Trivia Crack, which has distinct versions in the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Latin America can upload trivia. Questions that get approved by at least 100 people in the game's Question Factory will make it to the general game for anyone to see.

"Users want to see new stuff every day. We have the ability to do that in each country without interfering with the gameplay of other countries," says Maximo Cavazzani, CEO of Etermax. "If you're in the U.K., you don't want NFL questions, and you want to see your length measured in meters instead of feet. There are many small things apart from having your own TV stars or geographic questions."

The Question Factory is what shot Trivia Crack to the top of the charts when it was added to the U.S. version in December. Next up are Russia and Japan, Cavazzani says.

With the game's 60-day run has come new levels of revenue. Ninety-nine percent of users download the free version of the game from the app store and never buy anything, but the 1% of users who purchase the $2.99 ad-free version or buy extra lives, coins and other features in either version account for 50% of revenue. The other 50% comes from advertising.

Trivia Crack itself makes up 99% of Etermax's revenue. In Argentina, the app even inspired a TV game show.

Etermax first hit it big in 2011 with Word Crack, a Words With Friends knockoff especially popular in its Spanish-language version. Since then, the company has released a steady stream of games, but Trivia Crack is the first to find this level of popularity.

Reaching this level of gaming influence is also a first for Argentina, Cavazzani says.

"It's an important milestone for the country and for the region to be the most downloaded application in the world," he says.

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