Popular Pokemon tracking app ‘Go Radar’ founder is Hub City native

JACKSON, Tenn. — A new app for the game that’s swept the globe is making the rounds itself, all thanks to a Hub City student.

“First day it didn’t do very well,” “Go Radar” creator Will Cobb told WBBJ Wednesday. “We only got a few thousand downloads, and I went to bed, woke up the next day, and we had like a few hundred thousand downloads.”

Cobb built and released the Pokemon tracking app just a week ago, and now it stays consistently on Apple’s most downloaded list among mega-apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Seven days later, Cobb said they’ve expanded to servers that cost around $1,000 a day to operate to keep up with the nearly one million new users who download the app every day.

Cobb said he started learning computer coding on his own when he was just 10 years old to build games, and now his game is keeping one of the few Pokemon tracking apps out there functioning.

“Every time they release an update, it takes a few hours of work trying to figure out what they did and how to fix it and how to keep our app going on the App Store. It’s definitely a cat-and-mouse type game,” Cobb said.

At the end of the day, the USJ graduate and current Rhodes College junior told WBBJ he’s just happy to have made something that people want to use.

“I really spend a lot of time figuring out the best ways to make people be able to use this app effectively and to make people, keep people coming back,” Cobb said. “It’s crazy to think that some people are out there using this thing I’ve created and it’s helping them. I’ve had a lot of people emailing me just saying ‘thank you.'”

Cobb said he’s planning on keeping the app a priority when he goes back to school at Rhodes this fall, and continually thanked teachers who’ve helped him along the way and users who continue to support the app’s progression.