How did Snapchat come to be?
Snapchat was one of the biggest platforms in 2013 with the introduction of Stories. In September of 2015, there was growth in popularity for Snapchat, after the facial recognition app “Looksery” launched for animated selfie lenses. The launch had the world using the puking rainbows for days.
The launch of the app did not stop there. About 36% of Americans around the world, ages 18 to 29, had an account on Snapchat. This app was the fastest growing social media platform for millennials.
Snapchat had 7 billion views each day passing Facebook users at the time. As Snapchat seemed to die down, an upgrade was presented in March of 2016. This upgrade added new features like filters, stories and a lot more. This allowed the app to have more easy access to users.
Then in July of 2016, only 4 months after the upgrade, a new launch of “Memories” was presented. This was the biggest and most useful feature that was added to the app.
Memories let others share pictures on camera roll and save your snaps to any part of Snapchat for later. Bitmoji was another launch by Snapchat that was a customizable emoji that was linked to your account and sent in chat on your snaps.
This social media is the fastest growing app in recent years. Snapchat has more users than Twitter and was only set to grow even more over the years.
What is happening with Snapchat now?
It has been known that Snapchat is/was one of the biggest social media platforms. It seems that other social media platforms are outshining Snapchat that no one seems to care for it as much.
Rumors about Snapchat are also making their ways to users. There have been reports from former users that Snapchat has created a tool, called SnapLion.
This allows the company to access many accounts in order to comply with legal requests from law enforcement.
Two former employees spoke of this action. They implied that employees from Snapchat abused the tool and used it to inappropriately access user information.
Once users found this information online, they stepped off this app and users have been going down ever since. Snapchat’s usage in North America has been flat for almost three years now.
The company reported losing users in North America in the recent quarter with the falling to 99 million daily active users. It’s down 100 million users since 2024.
Although Snap has a decreased users in North America, they have reported a 14% year-over-year increase in revenue to $1.36 billion, which is involved with the growth in advertising the Snapchat Plus subscription.
The platform itself is growing but not gaining anymore new users. So far, Snapchat has earned $5.36 billion, a 16% increase over the years.
Snapchat keeps bringing more to the company. For example, it started with Snapchat Plus subscription that gives you more to do on the app itself, and the launching of AR glasses.
With that, it seems like Snapchat is trying to stay relevant with all these other popular platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
It’s safe to say that Snapchat’s business is growing and improving despite the lack of user growth that they hoped for.
