Alt-right social media platform Parler has been kicked to the curb by Apple, Google, Amazon, and basically every other company it could possibly do business with, but a glance at the Play Store top app charts might leave you confused — if you can't spell, anyway. Somehow "social talking app" Parlor has hit #3 on the Play Store.

Clearly, a whole lot of folks are unable to divine the difference between these two apps given their similar spelling and social slant. While most of our readers should be familiar with Parler given the effect it's had on recent events (conservative extremists used the unmoderated social media platform to organize an insurrection on the US capitol which resulted in five deaths), Parlor with an "o" simply connects you to other users to chat about a selected topic.

The platform initially launched as Parlor.fm back in 2011 and has cruised silently through the last near-decade of life, dropping the ".fm" suffix and accruing a total of six million users in that time, according to the company. The Play Store app listing dates to 2014 according to AppBrain and claims merely 1,000,000+ installs and was last updated in July of 2020.

We fired up the app to give it a try, and it's a genuine dumpster fire, earning every bit of its 2.9-star rating at the time of writing. Room-like topics are marked by big unattractive icons, the app is plastered in ads, and it doesn't even work very reliably — I sat waiting to connect to a call for a few minutes before giving up, which is probably for the best.

Last night, Parlor peaked at #2 on the Play Store and App Store top free app charts. At the time of writing, it's fallen slightly to #4 on the App Store and #3 for the Play Store.

While it isn't the app most people searching for "Parler" on their app stores were looking for, recent reviews indicate at least some folks are entirely unaware of the mixup — bless their hearts.

Parlor - Social Talking App Developer: Parlor
Price: Free
2.2
Download

Source: Play Store