Facebook has poked its way into the top ranks of mobile apps yet again.
The social-media company put smaller developers on notice last week with the launch of its new Poke app for iPhones. The app mimics Snapchats, a popular app with teens that allows users to send images — often titillating — that self-destruct moments after the recipient views it.
Poke immediately rose to No. 1 on the iPhone. (It is not yet available on Android devices.) It fell to No. 3 this week but is still the top-ranked social-networking app.
The development of Poke is a study in Facebook’s ability to quickly identify the top trends in tech, build competing services rapidly and leverage its size to push its version of popular apps to the top of the charts.
Poke rose to the top-downloaded free iPhone app within one day of launching — which came less than two weeks after development started, according to an online post from a Facebook developer.
“Some friends and I built this new iPhone app over the last 12 days,” Blake Ross wrote on his Facebook page moments after launch. “Check it out and let us know what you think!”
Facebook’s Poke entered the disposable photo craze, similar to how its Messenger took on texting apps. Facebook reportedly tried to buy WhatsApp, a messaging service. When it couldn’t seal a deal, it built its own Messenger.
Thanks to the aggressive mobile development and cutthroat competitiveness, Facebook owned three of the top 10 iPhone apps of 2012, helped by Messenger’s explosive 544 percent growth to more than 10 million monthly active users, according to Nielsen.
The other two are the flagship Facebook app and Instagram, which Facebook acquired for $1 billion.