Merge pull request #349 from flathub-infra/cassidyjames-patch-1

blog: 2 billion downloads, 4 million active users post

blog/2024-08-13/index.md

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+---
+slug: 2-billion-downloads-2024
+title: 2 Billion Downloads & Other Milestones from 2024 So Far
+authors: [cassidyjames]
+tags: [milestone, stats]
+image: ./milestones.png
+---
+
+It's been a busy year, and our platform and developer community-building efforts are paying off. Let's take a look at what we've been up to over the last six months, and measure its effect.
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+At the beginning of the year we announced an incredible milestone for Flathub: [over one million active users](../2024-01-26/index.md). But we didn't slow down; in February we [attended FOSDEM](../2024-01-31/index.md), then announced [improved app moderation](../2024-02-21/index.md) and [app brand colors](../2024-02-26/index.md) in preparation for some new features. Those efforts ultimately launched with [the new homepage and featured app banners](https://floss.social/@flathub/112315662449987878) in April.
+
+## Milestones
+
+![Flathub: 70% of top apps verified, 100+ curated quality apps, 4 million active users, 2 billion downloads](milestones.png)
+
+We're back with some new milestones thanks to the continued growth of Flathub as an app store and the incredible work of both our largely volunteer team and our growing app developer community:
+
+### 70% of the most popular apps are verified
+
+Over [1,000 apps](https://flathub.org/apps/collection/verified/) have been verified by their developers on Flathub, including 70% of the [top 30 most popular apps](https://flathub.org/apps/collection/popular/1). Developers of verified apps are ultimately in charge of their own app listings, and their updates are delivered directly to Flathub users while passing our automated testing and human review of things like permission changes.
+
+### 100+ curated quality apps
+
+Over 100 apps are now passing our quality guidelines that include checks like icon contrast on both light and dark backgrounds, quality screenshots, and consistent app naming and descriptions so users get a better experience browsing Flathub. These guidelines are what enable us to curate and display visually appealing and consistent banners on the new home page, for example.
+
+This means that between late February and July, the developers of over 100 apps went out of their way to improve—and sometimes make significant changes to—their apps' metadata to get ready for these new guidelines and features on Flathub. We're proud of these developers who have gone above and beyond, and we look forward to even more apps opting in over time.
+
+Developers, if you'd like to see your app featured on the home page, please ensure you are following these guidelines! We've [heard from app developers](https://fosstodon.org/@bragefuglseth/112430463664651417) that getting your app featured not only gives a bump in downloads, but can also bring an increase in contributions to your project if it's open source.
+
+### 4 million active users
+
+Six months ago we passed one million active users based on a simple if conservative estimate of updates to a common runtime version we had served. Using that same methodology, we now estimate we have over 4 million active users!
+
+As a reminder, this data is publicly available and anyone can check our work. In fact, I personally would love if we could work with a volunteer from the community to automate this statistic so we don't have to do manual collation each time. If you're interested, check out [this GitHub issue](https://github.com/flathub-infra/website/issues/2945).
+
+### Over 2 billion downloads
+
+Those users have been busy, too: to date we have served over two billion downloads of different apps to people using different Linux flavors all around the world. This is a huge community of people trusting Flathub as their source of apps for Linux.
+
+## Thank you!
+
+Thank you to our download-happy community of users who have put their trust in Flathub as their source of apps on Linux. Thank you to all of the developers of those apps, and in particular those developers who have chosen to follow the quality guidelines to help make Flathub a more consistent and engaging space. And thank you to every contributor to Flathub itself whether you are someone who fixed a typo in the developer documentation, helped translate the store, contributed mockups and design work, or spent countless hours keeping everything running smoothly. 
+
+As a grassroots effort, we wouldn't have become the Linux app store without each and every one of you. ❤️