How a TV show about a Chinese start-up gave unknown chat app Magic Crystal its big break

Messenger app recorded 1 million downloads just 18 days after ‘ Entrepreneurial Age’ debuted

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Entrepreneurial Age tells the challenges faced by a group of young Chinese entrepreneurs who develop a messaging app. Photo: Weibo

Published: 6:02am, 5 Dec 2018Updated: 4:07pm, 5 Dec 2018

A fictional messaging app featured in a Chinese TV drama about the trials and tribulations of a serial entrepreneur brought its real-world version overnight fame and propelled it to second place on the download charts, just below WeChat and Weibo, two of China’s most dominant social media apps. The apps count over 1 billion and 400 million monthly active users, separately.

Just 18 days after Entrepreneurial Age debuted on October 12, Magic Crystal, as the app is called in both the series and in real life, recorded 1 million downloads. However, its welcome was short-lived – it fell to 113th place in the Social Networking chart after the show ended a month later.

The app’s unexpected popularity echoed the similar fate of another messaging app called Bullet Messenger, that was touted as an upstart rival to Tencent’s WeChat. Developed by smartphone maker Smartisan, Bullet was briefly the most downloaded free app in the Chinese App Store with 5 million registered users within 10 days of its August launch. But just months later, it was pulled from the Chinese App Store following copyright complaints.

The 40-episode drama starring Hong Kong actress Angelababy Yeung and mainland actor Huang Xuan tells the story of how a group of young Chinese entrepreneurs created a social networking app with a “push to talk” feature and “text message reading” function. It was loosely based on the experiences of 30-year-old Chinese serial entrepreneur and co-developer of Magic Crystal Heatherm Huang. Producers of the show claimed viewership reached 4 billion.

Despite wide online criticism of an illogical plot and poor acting, and one-star ratings on review forums, Huang said that Magic Crystal has since attracted “many investment offers”.

Screenshot of Magic Crystal on the App Store.