Draw Something," the world's fastest-growing mobile game, experienced an explosive growth trajectory without any operational disruptions. Developed by OMGPOP, the game was downloaded a staggering 50 million times within just 50 days of its launch. During this period, billions of drawings were created, with the rate of new drawings reaching more than 3,000 per second. This remarkable growth was supported by Couchbase NoSQL database technology, which enabled the game's expansion without any downtime and maintained sub-millisecond latency for database reads and writes.
The game's viral success was unprecedented. Draw Something not only reached the #1 spot on both the App Store and Android Market within a month of its release, but it also garnered celebrity endorsements. This popularity surge led to over 50 million downloads. Key milestones in the game's journey included its acquisition by Zynga on March 23, 2012, and becoming the #1 downloaded app on iTunes on March 5, 2012. The game was originally released on February 6, 2012, and received notable social media mentions, such as from a cast member of Jersey Shore on March 1, 2012, and Miley Cyrus tweeting about her addiction to the game on March 8, 2012.
The user data for Draw Something showed a rapid increase in daily active users, from 1 million in week 2 to 15 million by week 8. The total number of drawings followed a similarly impressive trajectory, starting from 10 million in week 3 and reaching 2 billion by week 6.
To manage this explosive growth, the Couchbase database was efficiently scaled from 6 to over 90 servers, remarkably without any game downtime. This expansion ensured non-stop entertainment for users. The game's database performance remained consistently high with transaction latency staying well below a millisecond, contributing to a seamless and enjoyable user experience.
Overall, the story of Draw Something is a testament to the potential of mobile games to achieve rapid viral growth, underscored by robust technological support and a highly engaged user base.
