A Picture’s Worth 12 Million Downloads: Draw Something Is #1 on iOS and Android

Draw Something proves that if you provide an outlet for imagination, the whole world will play. One month after launch, OMGPOP’s CEO tells me its Pictionary-style mobile game now has 12 million downloads, around 7.1 million daily active users, and is the #1 free and paid game on both the U.S. App Store and Android Market (Google Play). If Draw Something can hold our attention now that it’s got it, the game could become the most popular thing on mobile since those disgruntled birds.

To get just how ridiculously popular Draw Something as become, here’s how it stacks up against the growth of Temple Run, Words With Friends, Instagram, and Pinterest:

Of all those comparisons, OMGPOP’s CEO Dan Porter explains Draw Something is most similar to Instagram because it’s powered by creativity:

“This isn’t about a game like Angry Birds or Temple Run, which are awesome games but are single player and designed experiences. And this isn’t like a social game like Words With Friends which is also an awesome game, but played on a fixed game board. This is about communication. It is a structure or a platform for users to communicate back and forth through drawings and shared personal experiences.”

And users aren’t just trying the game out and forgetting about it. Porter tells me it has become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, with over 500,000 tweets per hour about the game. Soon the game will cross half a billion drawings. Similar to how Words With Friends rode up the charts on the back of a tweet by John Mayer, tweets by semi-celebrities Rosie O’Donnell, Tennessee Titans Safety Robert Johnson, and Vinny Guadagnino of Jersey Shore have propelled growth.

Draw Something is making gobs of money too. Players pay for extra colors, to reduce the number of letters they choose from when guessing what a drawing is, or to draw a different word. The $0.99 paid version is the App Store’s #2 highest grossing app and the free version is the #9 highest grossing through these in-app purchases alone. The success spans the globe, as Draw Something is the #1 free and paid iOS app in over 9 countries.

As Porter told AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka last week, OMGPOP is rapidly building a team around the game, has moved off of Amazon to its own servers, and is hoping the network effect of its user base will help it fend off clones.

By listening to user feedback and integrating more social elements Draw Something could get even bigger. The top 3 feature requests from users are the options to chat, create profiles, and follow friends so you can play and share drawings with them.

While much of social gaming devolves into a series of scheduled clicks, it’s inspiring to see that we can still get excited about using our brains to create something on our own. Developers, don’t be afraid to make us think.

[Image Credit: Draw Something user Stereotripical]