Meta’s Muse Hits 10 Million, but Trust Is the Harder Sell
Meta’s Muse Hits 10 Million, but Trust Is the Harder Sell
Muse launched in September and quickly climbed to the top of the U.S. App Store. Within its first 40 days, Sensor Tower counted 10.9 million downloads, including 10.2 million in the United States — a threshold reached by only 11 other apps in that time frame. Meta later told investors that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had set up a Muse agent.
The surge was not entirely organic. Meta devoted 39% of its total October advertising spend to Muse, up from 23% the month before, while using an ecosystem that reaches 3.6 billion daily users to promote the newcomer. Yet the retention figures suggest the app has held attention beyond its launch blitz: seven-day U.S. retention stood at 30%, compared with a 19% average for ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, Sensor Tower said.
On Meta’s third-quarter earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg framed shopping as the clearest signal of commercial promise. More than a quarter of Muse users are buying through the app, with average purchases above $200, he said; about a quarter of people who set up Muse use it daily. Users are also connecting email and calendars for productivity, a behavior Meta argues reflects confidence in its security controls.
That confidence is the unresolved tension. Forrester analyst Kate Winick said Muse becomes more useful as it gains access to more information, but “overall trust in Meta remains low.” Her warning landed the same day a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion over allegations involving data handling and misinformation.
Meta’s next move is to turn the early rush into a business. It plans to keep Muse free for most users while taking fees on commerce, selling subscriptions to power users and extending the agent to small businesses. Zuckerberg also says Muse will reach Meta’s smart glasses next month, making the agent “central to the business model” for the hardware. The sales pitch is clear: a personal AI everywhere. The harder task is persuading users that convenience is worth the access it requires.
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