Meta’s Muse Boom Faces Its Hardest Test: Trust
Meta’s Muse Boom Faces Its Hardest Test: Trust
Muse launched in September and quickly became Meta’s newest distribution success story. Sensor Tower counted 10.9 million downloads in its first 40 days, including 10.2 million in the United States — a pace achieved by only 11 other apps. Meta’s marketing machine mattered: the company devoted 39% of its October advertising spend to Muse, while the app also benefited from promotion across services used by 3.6 billion people daily.
The early numbers suggest more than a fleeting download spike. Muse reached 2.5 million daily active users on October 16, and its U.S. retention after seven and 14 days outpaced the averages for ChatGPT, Claude and Grok. Yet the comparison has limits: ChatGPT reached roughly 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days, helped by availability in far more markets than Muse, which remains limited to the U.S. and Canada.
On Wednesday, Meta paired that momentum with a sharply stronger third-quarter report. Net income for July through September rose to $9.86 billion, from $2.71 billion a year earlier, as revenue climbed. On the earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people had set up a Muse agent and identified shopping as its leading use: more than a quarter of users are making purchases through the app, with an average order above $200.
Meta’s pitch is that those transactions can finance an expensive AI future. Zuckerberg said the service should remain free for most people, with revenue coming from commerce fees, subscriptions for heavier users and eventually small-business tools. The company expects to improve Muse’s compute efficiency by more than tenfold within a year while building capacity for more than a billion users.
That confidence runs into Meta’s old vulnerability. Forrester analyst Kate Winick said the more information Muse receives, the better it works — but “overall trust in Meta remains low.” Meta argues that secure and confidential virtual-machine features will protect user data. Whether that assurance is enough may determine whether Muse becomes a durable platform, rather than simply Meta’s latest expertly marketed app.
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