Hooked is a
mobile application
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on de ...
where users create and read
chat fiction, short pieces of fiction told in the format of text messages between fictional characters. The app was released in September 2015 and was developed by Telepathic Inc.
Features
Hooked is a
freemium
Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...
smartphone app that allows users to write or read short stories made up of text messages between characters.
CEO
Prerna Gupta
Prerna Gupta is an American serial entrepreneur focused on consumer entertainment. She currently is the CEO of Telepathic Inc., which developed the smartphone app Hooked. She cofounded several startups focused on music, dating, and short-stories ...
described the app as "books for the
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before the ...
generation" or "Twitter for fiction."
As of March 2019, the app had more than 40 million active users.
The stories are written by a mix of professional authors and
crowd-sourced
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
participants.
The most popular genres are suspense and horror.
The stories usually lack literary elements like
character arc
A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to ch ...
s, are
simply written and are intended to be suspenseful or addicting.
Each piece of fiction on the app is approximately 1,000 to 1,300 words long and can be read in about five minutes.
Some longer stories are told in "chapters" and a 32,000-word
thriller called Dark Matter was released in 2018.
The app provides a certain number of text messages for free, then delays the next text message by 15 minutes unless the user pays for a subscription.
Prior to 2020, the app offered a three-day free trial and then required users to pay. According to Gupta, the app was intended to get the younger generation to read more without getting distracted.
Most users of the app are between 13 and 24 years-old.
History
The Hooked app was first released in September 2015.
Initially, Hooked featured about 200 stories that were written by professional authors selected by the app developers.
The following year, Telepathic Inc. released Hooked 2.0, which allowed users of the app to create and share their own short stories.
By mid-2016, the app had 700 stories written by professional authors and 9,000 stories written by users.
Hooked had 1.8 million downloads by 2016
and 20 million download as of 2017, which generated $6.5 million in revenue.
The response to Hooked prompted others to create similar text-message based short story apps, like Yarn and Tap.
Starting in 2020, longer stories were introduced on the app in chapters.
Background
The idea for Hooked was conceived when Gupta was working on writing a book of her own.
She and her husband tested short stories with 15,000 people and found that readers were five times more likely to read a story to its end if the story was presented in a text message format.
They created Telepathic Inc., which developed Hooked.
As of 2017, the Telepathic has raised $6 million in funding to develop and support the Hooked app.
References
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Cross-platform software
Mobile applications