The success of The Lad Bible is testament to irreverent humour’s gargantuan pull on the consciousness of teens and millennials alike and the release of the official app has illustrated the popularity of the social media news site after it topped the app store in just 24 hours.
Brushing aside the established news publishers such as the BBC and the Guardian, The Lad Bible waltzed into the number one spot on the App store with yesterday's (1 December) release of its free iOS app.
In a stunt to promote the release it launched the app into space with the help of Yorkshire-based Sentintospace who attached a camera onto a 10m diameter helium balloon, with a parachute attached, and filmed the results which are expected to appear on the site soon.
Solly Solomou, chief executive of the The Lad Bible, said: “We wanted to go the extra mile with our debut app launch and where better than space? The Russians sent a dog into space, Nasa sent a monkey to space. At The Lad Bible, we sent our app into space. Well, near space.”
Responding to the chart success of the app a spokesperson for the publisher said: “We're the number one app in the app store overall and top news app. Not bad for just 24 hours.”
A social campaign accompanied the release, encouraging users to send their funniest photos using the #TheLADbibleApp hashtag with the promise that the best would be retweeted.It proved hugely popular, with hundreds of Twitter users spreading the news of the release with the same puerile style of humour that has become synonymous with.
The campaign proved hugely popular, with hundreds of Twitter users spreading the news of the release with the same puerile style of humour that it has become synonymous with.
However, the news site has been keen to emphasise a more serious approach to current events, promising that the app would have “more quality storytelling and video, mirroring a change The Lad Bible has gradually made on its site, where some of its most-shared stories are news-related and often featuring strong female figures.”
Other selling points of the app include downloads, offline caching, one-tap access, infinite scroll and personalisation.
The move is likely to help The Lad Bible to grow its already huge readership, which has risen exponentially since its launch in 2012 and has flurished while other lad mags like Zoo and Nuts have failed.
The app will also keep its audience in its own content platform, allowing it to become less dependent on Facebook which some publsihers fear is co-opting their content to power its ownecon-system.
Despite this, Facebook has proven to be a huge catapult for the publisher which, according to its own data from the social network, reaches 150 million people a week via the platform. It also claims that half of all British men between 18 and 24 on Facebook read its content as well as 20 per cent of women in the same demographic.
