Ugly Meter app makes a pretty penny via Howard Stern
The app is now ranked second in the U.S. listing of top paid iPhone apps and has reportedly generated $500,000 for its owners.
An application that makes its goal to tell you how ugly you are is riding high in Apple's App Store.
Ugly Meter, which has been around for quite some time, has suddenly found itself threatening Angry Birds Space for the top spot in Apple's App Store. For a period of three weeks recently, the application topped China's listing of top iPhone apps, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail. As of this writing, it's in second place in the U.S. store.
Ugly Meter first made headlines last year after raising concerns among anti-cyberbullying organizations. The application allows users to snap an image of their face, and then scans it for symmetry, contours, and other elements to determine how good- (or bad-) looking a person is. Ratings are handed out on a scale of 1-10, and include some not-so-nice quips about a person's looks.
Although Ugly Meter had maintained some relevance in the App Store, the app became a phenom nearly overnight recently due mainly to none other than Howard Stern. According to the Daily Mail, app developer Dapper Gentlemen made $80,000 in a single day after the $4.99 Pro version of Ugly Meter was showcased on the shock jock's morning radio show on Sirius XM. All told, according to the Ugly Meter listing in the App Store, the application has been downloaded over 5 million times. The developers have generated over $500,000 in total revenue, according to the Daily Mail.
That cash isn't going to waste. One of the co-creators of the Ugly Meter app, Joe Overline, went back on the Stern's show last week and said his company is now planning to hire another programmer to advance its application-development plans.