A month after the official app vanished, an impostor "ten ten" hit 60K installs on Google Play

The walkie-talkie app ten ten, which French teens were obsessed with, vanished from Google Play this August. In September 1, an app copying its name, slogan and features went live. It ranks first when you search "ten ten" on Play and got 61K installs in two months. It didn't build a better product than the official one. It just grabbed the spot the official app left empty. Below: how it did that, how long it can last, and what in this playbook is worth learning and what is best avoided.

An Android user whose friends invited them, but who couldn't find the app

In April 2024, someone posted in the Google Play help community: "There's a walkie-talkie app called tenten that all my friends have, but my phone says 'not compatible with your device.' Can you help?" At the time the official ten ten was booming in France: press and hold a friend's avatar to talk, and the voice plays straight out of their phone, even with their screen locked. In 2024 5, June, it topped both the App Store and Play charts in France. Le Figaro, Le Parisien and TechCrunch all covered it, and some schools issued notices banning it.

Two years on, "all my friends have it, I can't install it" has gotten worse. The AppBrain page for the official Android version now reads: "ten ten is no longer on Google Play. It was there for 2 years, until August 2026," with 14M total installs before it was pulled. The official site tenten.app no longer loads. The iOS version is still downloadable, but its last update was in June 2025 18. An October 14 Japanese write-up also says the Play page showed "not found," and the author found no shutdown notice.

But there are still people on the iPhone side: in early November, the official App Store listing in France still had 154K ratings and ranked #92 in its category. So people still tell their friends "get ten ten, let's talk." Android users who search "ten ten" on Play today get this app first.

What it is

On the store it's called "Ten Ten — Your Circle, On Tap"; the official iOS app is "ten ten - your friends, on tap." The features are the same: sign up with email, send your PIN to friends to add them; hold an avatar to talk, swipe up to lock into hands-free mode; new messages wake the other person's phone; you can switch to video mid-conversation; plus a "poke" feature. The French store page has a full French description that opens with "Pas de fil d'actualité. Pas d'inconnus." (No feed. No strangers.), a line lifted from the official app. It also built a website, tentenly.com, using the official app's copy: "For friends, not feeds," "Hold to talk," plus "Android is live."

Who's behind it is written on the store page. The publisher account is named "All Reels Downloader, Video Saver And Downloader," and the same account also lists several Reels downloaders and a ringtone downloader. The developer website points to my-instants.com, matching another name-riding app from the same group, "MyInstants: Meme Soundboard": listed in April, 206K installs, riding on the well-known sound-effects site myinstants.com. The last line of the French description is "Développé par Softsove," and the privacy email is also at softsove.com. SOFTSOVE is an outsourcing software company in Anand, Gujarat, India.

The app has ads. The store lists in-app purchases at $0.19–84.99 each, but the description never mentions any paid feature. What it sells, and whether it has collected any money, can't be seen from outside.

The numbers: 60K in two months, rising in waves

The growth came in waves. In October, a few days brought thousands of installs a day, while the days in between only had tens to hundreds. It may be paid ads, or someone at the official app may have been pushing it in bulk; not verified. The first week of November averaged about 2,300 installs per day.

Rankings are sliding. In the French communication free chart it dropped from #139 on 10-29 to #198 on 11-06; in Italy it sat between #153 and #198; from Nov 2 it ranked #120–170 in India, and it never made the overall chart. The volume and the team's location in India match up, so it may have bought cheap installs locally; inferred.

488 ratings, averaging 4.0–4.2, but the distribution is odd: 1-star and 4-star ratings come in at the same steady rate as 0,2-star and 3-star ones, day after day. That doesn't look like organic user ratings; unverified whether they were bought.

Why it took off

In one line: the official app disappeared from Play, and it filled the gap, so users come searching for it themselves.

• Timing: the official app was pulled in August, and this one went live in September 1, less than a month later. The brand demand left behind by 14M installs had no one serving it on Play.
• Almost free acquisition: users were brought in by friends and already wanted ten ten before they installed. Searching the brand name, the name, icon and description all match, so they install. The countries where it charted (France, Italy, Spain, the UAE) are exactly where the official app had many users.
• Copied wholesale: name, slogan, PIN-based friend adding, lock-screen wake-up, French description, website. A teenage user can't tell real from fake. Download sites like CNET Download, AppBrain and Softonic all list it too, so some web traffic from "ten ten android" searches also lands here.
• No one contesting it: searching "ten ten" on the French Play store, the apps ranked below it are all number-matching games called Ten Ten. It's the only app riding this brand name, and the official side hasn't said anything publicly.

On TikTok and X, no one seems to be promoting it. Searching "ten ten android" mostly returns old official videos from 2024 years ago; the most-watched is the official account's "android is now available everywhere," with 2.71M views. These old videos still send it traffic, but it makes no content of its own.

Its fatal flaw: it can't reach friends on iPhone

It has no product differentiation. Its only difference is that it's on Play and the official app isn't. That is also its biggest problem: its accounts don't connect to the official app. Android users install it to talk with friends who use the official app on iPhone, but once installed they can't add those friends unless they also get them to install the clone. So "fast to arrive, hard to retain" is almost inevitable, which fits the steady slide in French rankings and the odd rating distribution.

Two things could make it vanish overnight. One: the official app returns to Play. Two: the official company or trademark holder files a complaint with Google. The whole app is built on someone else's trademark, and it has no answer if either happens.

Who it's competing with

On Android, apart from this app, there is no real product offering "just a few close friends, audio playing directly even with the screen locked." Big tech voice messages require tapping to play, and Apple's walkie-talkie only exists on the watch.

If it were you

C: you can't take this exact opportunity, but you can learn the approach. The term "ten ten" is already taken by it, so a copycat would only rank second. It sits on two landmines itself, trademark complaints and the official app returning, and it can't connect with official users. What's worth taking away is its way of finding opportunities and its speed.

Who it fits: small teams that already make utility apps on Google Play, have a developer account ready, and can build and ship an app in two or three weeks; people who accept that an app could be pulled at any time and treat it as one bet among many.

Who it doesn't fit: people who want to build a lasting brand; people who can't afford their account being banned along with their other apps (trademark complaints often take the whole account down); people hoping to build a social graph with this, since an impostor app has been cut off from official users from day one.

How to do it: there are two paths, with very different risk.

• Its way (gray): watch for signals like "a hot app is gone from a store": AppBrain marking it "no longer on Google Play," an app hot on iOS but absent from Play, a dead official domain, no updates for over a year. Within weeks, list a same-feature app with the brand term and category term in the title and package name. The window is usually only a few weeks after the removal. The cost is trademark risk, so decide before you start what you'll do if a complaint gets you taken down.
• The proper way (more worth it): don't impersonate; pick your own name and build an Android walkie-talkie app for "close friends only, audio straight through the lock screen," and ship on both Android and iOS. The official iOS app has been idle for over a year, so friend graphs will eventually need a new home. Use category terms like "walkie talkie," "push to talk" or "talkie-walkie" in the title, and before writing anything like "a ten ten alternative" in the store description, check whether local trademark law allows it.

How to get users: mainly through store search. The demand the official app left behind lives in searches like "ten ten android" and "talkie walkie amis." Also, one person installing isn't useful until they get friends to install too, so invite links and PIN sharing need to be the most prominent things in the app. On TikTok, people under the old official videos still ask "what about Android?"; replying there is cheaper than buying ads.

Timing: the official app hasn't returned to Play and hasn't said anything, so these few months are the window. If it comes back, or ten ten announces a shutdown or the iOS app is pulled, the window changes. The first case kills the opportunity; the second sends a large wave of iOS users looking for a new home.

Signs you got it wrong: ① the official app returns to Google Play, or this clone gets taken down, meaning the vacuum was shorter than expected; ② this clone's installs fall to a few hundred a day by the end of November, meaning the demand the official app left has been used up; ③ conversely, if it still adds over two thousand a day two months from now and is still charting in France, it means the category is missing a legitimate product on Android, and the non-impersonating route is worth serious effort.