# Knit together without a camera: a small Korean studio turned an offline knitting room into an app

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/play_me.knitwith.app.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> It moves the offline 뜨개방 (Korean knitting rooms, where people sit together and each knit their own project) into an app. Users open their own rooms and post the room link and invite code on Threads and Instagram to recruit people. Most Korean rivals at the time were iOS-only, so it launched with Android and web from day one.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · Android · written 11-6

knit with me(함께 떠요) · Be the best at all

# Knit together without a camera: a small Korean studio turned an offline knitting room into an app

**What it is** A knitting app with two halves: one half is an always-on, faceless "everyone sits together, each knitting their own" animal café and multiplayer room; the other half is counters, charts, and yarn logs for knitters.

**Why it's taking off** It brings the offline Korean "tttaeng-bang" (sitting together, each knitting their own) into the app. Users open their own rooms and post room links and invite codes on Threads and Instagram to recruit people. Most similar Korean apps are iOS-only, while this one launched with Android and web from day one.

**B** **How you could follow** Stop building Korean knitting apps. Take "essential tool + always-open shared space + user-hosted rooms with links" to crochet, embroidery, perler beads, or to knitting communities in Japan, Taiwan, and the West. Start by inviting active creators and small shops in each community to host the first rooms.

Grade B: the mechanic is clear and copyable, and few people know about it, but it's still small (about 5,200 Play installs), growth slowed after a mid-October spike, revenue is invisible, and multiplayer co-presence products often go quiet. Hardly anyone knows about it yet

Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-09-25 · 11-07 installs 5,217

Android · Total installs worldwide

Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.

Oct 10, a knitting account on Korean Threads, 「루나 니팅」(@luna.knitting), posted: 「15 people in! Room name 『루나 함뜨방(自由项目)』, any knitters want to join, come on in.」 The room isn't in a café. It's in an app called 「함께 떠요」(English name: knit with me). The next day, a Korean living overseas posted her friend invite code on Threads: 「I installed 함께떠요 too! So cute, it's so nice to know someone else is knitting alone abroad.」 That post got 823 views. A week later, the app was adding over a thousand installs a day on Google Play. It has no media coverage, no public revenue, and nobody has discussed it on X. Below: what it got right, why it's taking off now, and which parts you can take.

### What it is

A knitting app, in two halves.

One half is "companionship": when you open the app, you're already in a knitting garden. The other knitters are animals sitting on mats on the grass, each with a bubble above their head saying what they're knitting. Start a project timer and your animal picks up its needles, and that time is logged as today's knitting time. You can also visit other people's decorated "knitting cafés" as a guest. If you want to finish something alongside a group, open a "함뜨방" (a shared knitting room): the host sets the date, the headcount (up to 15 people), the rules, and approves who can join. Each room has a link you can post to social media to recruit. The official site is clear: no rankings, no scores, and the app doesn't count who knits the most.

The other half is "tools": chart annotation, row counters, timers, a yarn library, a knitting calendar, and the ability to import patterns from Ravelry (the world's largest knitting community).

It's made by Deploy (dployco.com), a small studio in South Korea. 2026 Oct 5 on iOS; Google Play lists the launch as Sep 25. It runs on iPad and the web too, and one account works across all of them. The free part is sitting down, chatting, and tapping to translate other people's messages. What you pay for is decorating, bigger rooms, and auto-translation. In-app purchases on Play are priced at $4.99–$49.99.

### It's really moving an offline habit into an app

Korean knitters have a set pastime called "tttaeng-bang" or "함뜨": people meet up, sit together, each knitting their own project, with no competition and no teaching, just company. Deploy's official site says: knitters like gathering to knit side by side, but it's hard to gather every time, so they want to bring the "no-competition tttaeng-bang" into an app.

Its landing page is blunt about how it differs from what exists: online knitting meetups are mostly video calls, where you have to set a time and turn on your camera. Here, you open the app and you're already sitting down. No face, no talking. "If someone's knitting next to me, I knit a little more."

User reviews say the same thing. A five-star review on the Korean App Store, 10-14: "Sometimes knitting alone with a stopwatch feels lonely. With 함께떠요 I log my progress, step into the room, see how much everyone has knitted and what they're making, and it feels like knitting together."

### Why now: the week of mid-October

| Date | Google Play cumulative installs |
|---|---|
| 10-14 | 504 |
| 10-17 | 1,943 (that day about +1,000) |
| 10-21 | 3,628 |
| 10-26 | 4,435 |
| 11-05 | 5,217 |

(Before 10-29 the figures are third-party estimates; after, they're public store numbers.)

From Oct 17 to 21 it added 400 to 1,000 a day, fell back to a few dozen a day at the end of October, then had two small bumps in early November (10-31 +291,11-02 +320). In the first 11-05 days it added +7 in total, and 782. The Play rating count is still too small to be shown in the store.

iOS is where it's stronger: the Korean App Store rating count is 10-29, 83,11-06 and 104, with an average of 4.8 (Korean App Store, 11-06). The US store has 5, Japan 3, Taiwan 2, so the users are basically in Korea. 11-06 It ranks first when you search "뜨개" (knitting) in the Korean App Store, and its rating count has already passed that of Knitflow, a Korean competitor that has been around for 21 months (90). iOS real downloads aren't public, but going by typical rating ratios, my estimate is in the thousands to tens of thousands (estimate).

It's a small scale. It's worth watching not because it's big, but because how it's gaining traction is clear.

### Where users come from

1. **Room links** (confirmed). Users open a 함뜨방 and then recruit on Threads and Instagram, and the recruitment posts are themselves ads. Besides the user 루나 above, a fan account, @may_for_jihoon, opened a room from 10/14 to 12/31 that taught fans in fan circles how to download the app and join rooms. The install peak from 10-14 to 10-21 lines up with the timing of these recruitment posts (inference; I haven't verified which individual post drove it).

2. **Friend invite codes** (confirmed). Users post their codes on Threads themselves. The overseas Korean user above represents a ready-made demand: people with no knitting friends nearby who knit alone.

3. **Organic recommendations from knitters on Instagram** (confirmed). The official account @knit_with_me___ posted its first Reel on 10-07, with only one line: "Search 『함께떠요』". Later spread came from regular users and yarn shops: "A new knitting app I just found, it's so cute to all sit together"; "So crazy, such a cute app... I heard it was made for knitting moms, I installed it right away"; a yarn shop in Gimhae posted "find me". The word users used most when sharing was "cute".

4. **Store search** : searching "뜨개" in the Korean store ranks it first, which is steady organic traffic. The official site also has long-tail pages in Chinese, Korean and English ("knit online together", "iPad pattern app", "Ravelry pattern app"), effect unknown.

Not found: paid ads, TikTok videos, discussion on X, and media coverage. Not finding them doesn't mean there was none, but at this scale it doesn't look like paid acquisition (inference). On Play it did enter the Taiwan Lifestyle free chart at ranks 87–109 (10-29 to 11-06). That chart's bar is low, and around 100 daily adds is enough to get in, so it doesn't indicate anyone pushing it in Taiwan.

### Why users stick around

- **The tool is the reason to open it every day; company is the reason people come.** Knitters already need an app to count rows and view patterns, and this one covers that whole job. A review from 11-04: "I installed it when I first started knitting, it's so cute... and it's very good for tracking progress too."

- **Launched on all platforms at once.** The independent knitting apps that appeared in Korea around the same time were mostly iOS-only; Knitflow's Instagram comments had people repeatedly asking for Android. knit with me already has Android, tablet and web versions, and the five thousand-plus installs on Play may well be largely the Android knitters who had been left out (inference).

- **Fast iteration.** From 10-27 to 11-03 it shipped four versions in one week (1.0.20 to 1.0.24). Users said "they fix things right away, every update feels exactly right." There's a downside: a four-star review from 11-01 complained that "frequent updates lost my row counts, too stressful." Nearly all the comments are feature requests (copying yarn info, a timer that runs in the background, clickable links in PDF patterns), which shows users are highly invested.

### Who it's competing with

| Product | Scale | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Focus Friend(Hank Green) | US store 10k ratings, Play 2.11M installs | A focus timer where "Xiaodouzi knits for you"; knitting is just a metaphor, with no real people and no knitting tools |
| My Row Counter | Play 1.26M installs | Pure row counting and patterns; Korean users complain about stiff translations and too many ads |
| knitCompanion | US store rating 6,910 | The biggest pattern tool, with no community |
| Loopsy | US store 17k rating | Western crochet and knitting tools plus a community, driven by TikTok; not "sitting together" |
| Knitflow 니트플로우 | Korean-store rating count 90 | A Korean tool app, iOS only, with no companionship |
| 니터즈 Knitters | 11 Korean store ratings, launched 2026-09 | Does logging and booking offline 함뜨 meetups, not always-on access |
| 닛로그, 뜨지, 뜨다, 한코한코 | 7–11 ratings each in the Korean store | Logging or a light community; users say 뜨다's community is inactive |
| 한코친구 | 1 Korean store ratings, launched 10-28 | A cute companion timer, the closest in direction, but without multiplayer shared rooms |

Six or seven knitting tools have appeared in Korea in a year, so it's crowded. But a knitter space that is always available, lets many people sit together, and includes translation hadn't been found at scale before it. Copycats have already started: in early November a Korean developer posted a web version on Threads, 3D "온라인 뜨개방" (knitting.cloud), with the same concept: people sit around together and each knits their own project.

### What it hasn't done well, or hasn't yet explained

- **The cross-border story isn't working yet.** The store description talks about "an app made for millions of knitters, meeting knitters around the world, with built-in translation," but nearly all actual users are in Korea.

- **Growth is slowing.** After the mid-October wave, daily adds dropped from over a thousand to a hundred or two. Whether rooms can keep bringing people in, wave after wave, needs two or three more weeks to tell.

- **The money isn't visible.** No public revenue or conversion data, and it has not appeared on any grossing chart.

- **It's unclear who is behind it.** A user relayed it as "made for knitting moms"; another account says "two sisters quit their jobs to build it," but I found no evidence. The studio's website lists 4 apps, with 3 more "coming soon", including Crewzy, which is "running with strangers," showing they're already carrying this format over to other hobbies.

### If it were you

**Verdict** : B. What's worth pursuing isn't "another Korean knitting app"; that space is already crowded. It's taking the "each doing their own thing, but together" format into a hobby or language no one has built for yet. The opportunity is real, but the scale is still small, the money is unproven, and multiplayer co-presence products are most vulnerable to dead rooms.

**Who it suits** : a 1–2 person small team already inside a craft or hobby community, who knows where these people gather; who can make cute art that people want to screenshot; who can ship iOS, Android and web at the same time.

**Who it doesn't suit** : people who want to start with paid acquisition (this format's users come in through room links and friends; bought users walk out of an empty room); people who can't build a genuinely useful tool and only want to make "companionship" (without a tool you use every day, people won't stay); people who expect meaningful revenue within six months.

**How to do it** : first find a group whose offline habit already involves "sitting together, each doing their own thing": crochet, embroidery, perler beads, cross-stitch, drawing, reading clubs, or knitting circles in Japan, Taiwan or Europe and the US (their offline knit nights are the same thing). First build the must-have tools for that hobby (counting, patterns, logs), then add an always-on public space and rooms anyone can open. Use animal avatars, no faces; no rankings; rooms should have links, and hosts should be able to decorate them, set rules and approve members. Keep sitting down and chatting free; charge for room decoration and larger rooms, and don't lock social access behind a paywall.

**How to acquire users** : have your first room hosts recruit for you. Before launch, find 20–30 active accounts in the target community on Instagram and Threads (or whichever platforms the target market uses), plus small yarn and supply shops; ask them to open the first rooms, with the room link as the recruitment post; set up friend invite codes. For the store name and keywords, go after the word people in that hobby most often search for in the local language.

**Deadline** : knitting peaks in autumn and winter, and around Christmas people knit the most all year. To catch this season, launch before early December; if you miss it, build for a hobby that doesn't depend on season.

**What would show you misjudged it** : (1) knit with me's Play daily adds stay in the dozens through December and the Korean rating count grows less than 50 in a month, meaning room recruitment was a one-time wave that won't compound; (2) after you launch, rooms often have just one or two people, meaning the density of this community can't support "always available" and you'd need to switch to scheduled events; (3) conversely, if it starts getting ratings in Japan or Taiwan and people open rooms in Chinese or Japanese, that means the translation route works, and you'd need to move faster to claim those markets.

---

Data and sources: Google Play store page and daily installs (10-29 to 11-06; earlier figures are third-party estimates); Korean App Store rating counts and reviews (10-10 to 11-04 reviews, 11-06 to view); Korean App Store search for "뜨개" (11-06); knitwith.me Chinese, Korean and English pages, dployco.com; Threads @luna.knitting (10-10), @iam_clairejames (10-11), @may_for_jihoon; public posts from the Instagram account @knit_with_me___ and from users and workshops; knitting.cloud. Places marked "inference" or "estimate" are inferences and estimates.

[Android store page ↗](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.knitwith.app)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus Friend(Hank Green) | iOS | 2025-07 | US store 10,009 ratings; Play 2.11M installs | A focus timer where "Xiaodouzi knits for you"; knitting is only a metaphor, with no real people sitting together and no knitting tools |
| My Row Counter | Android | 2018 | Play 1.26M installs | Pure counting and pattern tools, with no social features; Korean users complain about stiff translations and too many ads |
| knitCompanion | iOS | 2016 / 2018 | US store 6,910 ratings; Play 270k | The biggest pattern tool, with no companionship or community |
| Loopsy | iOS | 2025-05 | US store rating 17,082 | Western crochet and knitting tools plus a community, driven by TikTok; no real-time sitting together |
| Knitflow 니트플로우 | iOS | 2025-01 | Korean-store rating count 90 | A Korean tool app, iOS only (users keep asking for Android), with no social companionship |
| 니터즈 Knitters | iOS | 2026-09-12 | Korean-store rating count 11 | Logging, plus booking offline 함뜨 meetups and brand shopping; it's about scheduling offline events, not always-on real-time sitting together |
| 닛로그 / 뜨지 / 뜨다 / 한코한코 | iOS | 2025-12 to 2026-07 | 7–11 ratings each in the Korean store | Logging or a light social network, with no real-time companionship; users rate 뜨다 as having an inactive community |
| Ravelry | Web | 2007 | The world's largest knitting community | Forums and a pattern library; knit with me uses it as a pattern source but builds real-time co-presence itself |
| Zoom / Discord online knitting sessions, muted YouTube livestreams | Other | — | Scattered | You have to schedule a time and turn on your camera; knit with me needs no face and no appointment, you open it and sit down |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Word of mouth in Korean knitting circles on Instagram** : the official IG account @knit_with_me___ posted a Reel on 10-07; regular users and workshop accounts recommended it on their own (yujin9490 posted "made for knitting moms, installed it right away", erin_knit and others)

- **Verified** **Users open rooms and post room links on Threads and fan communities** : @luna.knitting recruited 15 people for a 함뜨방 10-10, with 61 likes and 68 replies; the fan account @may_for_jihoon opened 10/14–12/31 뜨메방 to teach fans how to join; the official FAQ says room links can be posted on social media

- **Verified** **Friend invite codes** : Threads @iam_clairejames posted "Someone knitting alone overseas, so happy, here's my invite code" on 10-11, with 823 views

- Inference **Founder story** : an IG post "originally just wanted to log my knitting, ended up building an app" (the original post can no longer be opened; only a search summary is available); a user relayed it as "made for knitting moms"

- **Verified** **Store search + multilingual SEO landing pages** : ranks #1 for 「뜨개」 in the Korean App Store; knitwith.me has Chinese/Korean/English long-tail pages (knit-together-online, ravelry-pattern-app, etc.)

- Inferred **Paid ads / TikTok / X / press** : nothing found in TikHub, x-radar, or web search; ad libraries don't track it

## knit with me (함께 떠요): a "virtual knitting café" for Korean knitters

> Channels: Google Play (`me.knitwith.app`, developer "Be the best at all") + iOS (id6814689614 「함께 떠요」, developer JUWON CHUNG) + iPad + web. Research date 2026-11-06.

### Bottom line

A small Korean studio (Deploy / dployco.com) built this knitting app. It takes the offline Korean knitting-room culture (「뜨개방 / 함뜨」, where people sit together and each knit their own project) and turns it into an always-open café of animal characters with no camera required, plus a full set of knitting tools (annotated pattern charts, row counters, timers, yarn library). It grew through word of mouth in Korean knitting communities on Instagram and Threads: users open 「함뜨방」 (knit-together rooms), each room has a link they can post on social media to recruit people, and invite codes also spread on Threads. It also launched simultaneously on iOS, Android, iPad, and web, while most Korean indie competitors only had iOS. It's still small (about 5.2K on Play), and growth slowed after a push in mid-October.

### 1. Data

**Google Play (googleplay library; history before 10-29 is estimated by AppstoreSpy)**

- The store lists the launch date as 2026-09-25, but growth really took off in mid-October. Cumulative installs: 10-14 504 → 10-16 919 → **10-17 1,943 (about +1,024 that day)** → 10-19 2,790 → 10-21 3,628 → 10-26 4,435 → 10-31 4,726 → 11-05 5,217 (app_day_ext + app_snap).

- Daily adds went from 10-17 to 10-21 at peak (400–1,000), then fell back to about 60 by late October. Early November had two smaller bumps (10-31 +291,11-02 +320), and **the last 7 days added +782** .

- The Play rating count is empty; there aren't enough ratings yet, so it isn't shown publicly. The install tier moved from 1,000+ to 5,000+ (11-02).

- Charts: it has only charted on the **Taiwan LIFESTYLE Top Free chart** , at #87–#109 (10-29 to 11-06, chart_rank). The bar for Taiwan's lifestyle category is low; about 100 daily adds is enough to reach the top 110. Not charted in Korea.

- In-app purchases $4.99–$49.99. Version went from 10-27 1.0.20 to 11-03 1.0.24, with **4 releases in one week** . The release notes are detailed, e.g. replying to SOS chats, and hint text for the center button on iPad.

- Developer email support@dployco.com; this developer has only this one app in the library.

**iOS (iTunes lookup + appstore library)**

- Listed 2026-10-05, category Lifestyle / Social. Korean store ratings: 10-29 83 → 11-04 98 (appstore.app_day) → 11-06 lookup 104, average 4.8. Other stores: US 5, Japan 3, Taiwan 2. Users are mostly in Korea.

- Searching 「뜨개」 (knitting) in the Korean store, 2026-11-06 ranks first. It has more ratings than Knitflow (90), which has been out for 21 months.

- Keywords from Korean reviews (iTunes RSS): "so cute and cozy", "knitting alone is lonely, but going into a room and seeing what others are knitting feels like knitting together", "they fix things right away after feedback"; some complain that frequent updates lost their row counts. Lots of feature requests, meaning users are highly engaged.

### 2. Competitors

| Competitors | Platform | Launched | Scale (what I found) | How it differs from knit with me |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus Friend(Hank Green / Honey B Games) | iOS / Android | 2025-07 | US store 10,009 rating; Play 2.11M installs (googleplay) | A focus timer where a cute character knits for you; knitting is only a metaphor, with no social rooms or knitting tools. Its cute companion aesthetic shares roots with knit with me |
| My Row Counter | iOS / Android | 2018 | Play 1.26M installs | Pure tools (counters, pattern charts); Korean users complain about stiff translation and ads |
| knitCompanion | iOS / Android | 2016 / 2018 | US store 6,910 ratings; Play 270k | The leader in pattern-chart tools, with no community or companionship |
| Loopsy | iOS | 2025-05 | US store rating 17,082 | Western crochet and knitting tools plus community, driven by TikTok creators; does not do "being in the same room" |
| Knit&Note | iOS / Android | 2023 | Official site claims 300k+ users | Nordic pattern and note-taking tools |
| Knitflow 니트플로우 | iOS only (no Android for a long time; Instagram comments constantly ask for Android) | 2025-01 | Korean-store rating count 90 | A tool app made by Korean students, with no social companionship |
| 니터즈 Knitters | iOS / Android | 2026-09-12 | Korean-store rating count 11 | Records, books offline 함뜨 sessions, brand shopping; closest in direction, but it means booking offline sessions, not being online together at any time |
| 닛로그 KnitLog / 뜨지 / 뜨다 / 한코한코 | iOS | 2025-12 to 2026-07 | 7–11 ratings each in the Korean store | Logging or light social; users rate 「뜨다」 as having an inactive community |
| 한코친구 | iOS | 2026-10-28 | Korean-store rating count 1 | A "cute companion knits with you" timer, closest to its cute companion direction, but without multi-person shared screens |
| Ravelry | Web | 2007 | The world's largest knitting community | Forum and pattern library; knit with me supports importing patterns from Ravelry, so it treats Ravelry as an upstream source |
| Zoom / Discord online knitting sessions, YouTube "muted livestream knit-alongs" | Other | — | — | You have to schedule a time and turn on your camera; knit with me's pitch is "no booking, no face, just sit down when you open it" |

Takeaway: knitting tools are already crowded, and Korea produced at least six or seven indie apps in a year. But before it, I found no product at scale offering an "always online, many people sitting together, with translation" knitter space.

### 3. Growth tactics (evidence)

1. **Word of mouth in Korea's knitting community on Instagram/Threads** (confirmed). The official IG @knit_with_me___ posted its first Reel ("search 『함께떠요』") on 10-07. The spread came from organic recommendations by ordinary users and yarn-shop accounts:
    - "Newly discovered knitting app, so cute with everyone crowded together" (IG DeTdmFytE7r)
    - "So crazy, such a cute app... I heard it was made for knitting moms, so I installed it right away" (IG yujin9490, Ded3uZAFMg8)
    - Gimhae yarn shop erin_knit posted "come find me" (DfUEelwTq0p)
    - "Thanks to 함께떠요, my knitting diary became cute" (DehWhO9T5aF)

2. **Users open rooms and the room links bring people in** (confirmed). Each 함뜨방 has a link in the product design, and the official FAQ says it can be posted to knitting communities or social media to recruit people. Real example:
    - On Threads, @luna.knitting posted "루나 함뜨방 (15 people)" on 10-10, with 61 likes and 68 replies, and commenters asked "what app is this?"
    - Idol fan account @may_for_jihoon opened a 「뜨메방」 (10/14–12/31) and taught fandom members how to download it and join
    - The 10-14–10-21 install peak lines up with when these room recruitment posts appeared. This match is an inference; I didn't verify each one.

3. **Invite code** (confirmed). On Threads, @iam_clairejames 10-11 posted: "I installed 함께떠요 too! Knitting alone overseas and feeling so happy, here's my friend invite code", with 823 views. Korean expats who knit alone are a ready-made audience.

4. **Founder story** (partly confirmed). One IG post says "I only meant to record my knitting, and it turned into an app, and it's gotten a bit out of hand" (DeJ2Z29D3bA; the original post is no longer accessible, only the search snippet). Users repeat it as "made for knitting wives". I found no evidence for the "two sisters quit their jobs to build it" claim from the recall card. The X result about "sisters, 2 people developing" refers to a different app.

5. **Multilingual SEO landing pages + all platforms** (confirmed, effect unknown). knitwith.me is in Chinese, Korean, and English, and has long-tail pages like knit-together-online, ipad-knitting-pattern-app, and ravelry-pattern-app. One account works across iPad, Android tablets, and web.

6. **Store search** : it ranks #1 for 「뜨개」 in the Korean App Store, a steady source of organic traffic.

7. **Channels with no evidence found** : paid ads (ad libraries only track a fixed list of products, so no results doesn't prove there was no spend, but the scale doesn't look like paid acquisition), TikTok (TikHub searches for 「함께떠요」 and "knit with me app" returned no relevant videos), X (x-radar: zero posts), press coverage, HN/Reddit. Taiwan Play charting comes from a low bar, not from promotion in Taiwan.

### 4. Why it took off

- **Productizing an existing offline Korean ritual** : 「뜨개방 / 함뜨」 is a familiar Korean knitting practice where people sit together and each knit their own project, with no competition. Deploy's own website says: "Knitters like to gather in 『뜨개방』 to knit separately, but these gatherings are hard to attend every time... bringing the uncompetitive 뜨개방 into an app". User reviews back up the core value: "I'm not lonely when knitting alone."

- **Very low bar for companionship** : no camera, no talking, no scheduling. Open it and you sit into someone else's café. The room shows only animal characters, nicknames, and "what they're knitting", with no fake people. Much lighter than a Zoom knit-along.

- **Good enough tools around the social layer, so people stay** : pattern annotation, row counters, a yarn library, and a knitting calendar solve the real need of "I need a knitting app anyway". Companionship is why people come; the tools are why they open it every day. Users say "the features are pretty detailed" and "it's great for keeping records."

- **Launched on every platform at once** : Korean indie knitting apps at the time mostly had only iOS (the Knitflow reviews are full of requests for Android), so its Android, tablet, and web versions were a built-in advantage. A large share of the 5K Play installs may simply be these Android knitters.

- **Cute aesthetic + the "small thing knits with you" trend driven by Focus Friend** : "cute" is the word users use most when sharing on their own, which gives them a reason to post screenshots (decorating the café, showing off finished projects).

- **Very fast iteration** : near-daily releases; users say "they fix things right away", which is why early word of mouth was good, with iOS at 4.8 stars.

### 5. Differentiation, and whether it's really why it grew

Differentiation = ambient co-presence + full knitting toolset + cross-language translation, all in one:

- vs. tool-first apps (My Row Counter, knitCompanion, Knitflow): adds shared rooms and social presence

- vs. community-first apps (Ravelry, 뜨다, 뜨지): not posting, but sitting together in real time

- vs. companion timers (Focus Friend, 한코친구): the companion is a real person, and a fellow knitter

In Korea, what actually drove growth was the "sit together + room link" piece; what users share is rooms and cute screenshots. The tools shape retention, not acquisition. **The cross-border story of "a million knitters" and "automatic translation" has not turned into growth yet** ; ratings in the US, Japan, and Taiwan are in single digits.

### 6. How many people know about it / how many are copying it

- **Still almost unknown** : no media coverage, no X discussion, no public revenue, and not on TrustMRR. It only circulates in a small circle of Korean knitters on IG/Threads.

- **Copycats** : knitting.cloud 「온라인 뜨개방」 (online knitting room), a web-based 3D room concept published on Threads around 11-04 by Korean vibe-coding developer @side.wlks. Same concept: sit together, each knitting their own project, showcase finished pieces in a window. Some cute companion timers appeared around the same time too, like 한코친구 (10-28). Not sure whether they were inspired by it.

### 7. What others can borrow

- Find an **offline ritual where people already do their own thing together** , and turn it into an always-on, faceless, lightweight shared space, wrapped around a tool the hobby actually needs. It can be copied to crochet, embroidery, perler beads, reading, studying (Korea already has 열품타 study rooms), drawing, running, and more. (Deploy's next app, Crewzy, is basically 「running with strangers」.)

- **Each room has a link, and the host feels like an owner** (decorate it, set rules, approve who joins). That turns users into the people bringing others in, and it can plug into the existing events of fan communities.

- Cute animal avatars lower the anxiety of being seen, and they also give people shareable content.

- Launched on all platforms at once, catching Android users ignored by iOS-only competitors.

- Free features are sitting together, chatting, and click-to-translate. Paid features are decorations, big rooms, and auto-translation. **It doesn't paywall the social part itself. It sells the host's status and the scale** .

### 8. Still unclear

- No public data on real iOS downloads (only 104 ratings; based on typical rating rates, iOS may be in the thousands to tens of thousands, unverified), conversion rate, or revenue.

- Which post or big account drove the install spike of about 1,000 on 10-17 has not been traced.

- Founder background: 「made for my wife」 versus 「made by two sisters」 doesn't add up. Deploy's studio size is unclear. Its website lists 4 apps, and 3 more are 「coming soon」.

- Whether the cross-border and translation story works: it has a ranking on the Taiwan Play chart, but it's unclear whether Taiwan has real users.

- Growth is slowing. Daily installs were about 60 at end of October and about 100–150 in early November. Whether room-based virality can keep it growing depends on the next two to three weeks.

- Whether it runs paid acquisition is unverified (the ad library only tracks products on its list).

### Sources

- Data card /home/ljr/fanout/why/cards/play_me.knitwith.app.json; googleplay library app_snap / app_day_ext / chart_rank / app_profile (2026-11-06 queried); appstore library app_day (Korean store)

- iTunes lookup / search / Korean-store customerreviews RSS (2026-11-06)

- [knitwith.me/](https://knitwith.me/), [knitwith.me/ko/knit-together-online](https://knitwith.me/ko/knit-together-online), [dployco.com/](https://dployco.com/)

- IG: [www.instagram.com/reel/DeMZu90zaRr/](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeMZu90zaRr/), [www.instagram.com/p/Ded3uZAFMg8/](https://www.instagram.com/p/Ded3uZAFMg8/), [www.instagram.com/p/DfUEelwTq0p/](https://www.instagram.com/p/DfUEelwTq0p/), [www.instagram.com/p/DeJ2Z29D3bA/](https://www.instagram.com/p/DeJ2Z29D3bA/) (search snippet), [www.instagram.com/p/DQuo1UhiHQl/](https://www.instagram.com/p/DQuo1UhiHQl/) (Knitflow, comments asking for Android)

- Threads: [www.threads.com/@iam_clairejames/post/DeVUvgKFPsK](https://www.threads.com/@iam_clairejames/post/DeVUvgKFPsK), [www.threads.com/@luna.knitting/post/DeVYkqkEhG8](https://www.threads.com/@luna.knitting/post/DeVYkqkEhG8), [www.threads.com/@may_for_jihoon/post/DedcCToGkht](https://www.threads.com/@may_for_jihoon/post/DedcCToGkht), [www.threads.com/@side.wlks](https://www.threads.com/@side.wlks)

- Korean app comparison post: [www.doanity.com/p/cmpzj09bv0005ii04nrkyyhbj](https://www.doanity.com/p/cmpzj09bv0005ii04nrkyyhbj)

- Copycat: [knitting.cloud/room](https://knitting.cloud/room)

- Focus Friend:[mashable.com/article/hank-green-focus-friend-app-chatgpt-app…](https://mashable.com/article/hank-green-focus-friend-app-chatgpt-app-store-charts)

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.