Video message app is going strong at 5 years old.
Snapchat is gaining on Facebook.
The five-year-old video messaging application has reached about 8 billion daily video views, according to a report by Re/Code. That puts Snapchat neck and neck with Facebook, which reported in November it had reached 8 billion daily video views.
Snapchat’s accomplishment is especially notable given that the disappearing messaging app has about 100 million daily viewers compared with Facebook’s more than 1 billion. Facebook hasn’t commented on Snapchat’s rise.
Snapchat is fast becoming the king of video. Daily video views are up five times over a year ago, said Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. Users are engaging with the app for 30 minutes per day, and more than half of Snapchat’s new users are more than 25 years old, he said.
Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown Poster developed Snapchat while they were students at Stanford University. The mobile app allows users to send and receive short-lived photos and videos dubbed Snaps. The sender determines how many seconds the recipient can view the Snap before the file disappears from the recipient’s smartphone or other mobile device.
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Valued at about $16 billion, Snapchat makes most of its revenue through media partnerships and advertising and at some point is expected to go public through an initial public offering. Traffic to the app rose from 2 billion daily video views to 6 billion between June and November.
Despite its massive growth, Snapchat hasn’t been without challenges. Earlier this month, the app was attacked by a hacker who pretended to be the company’s CEO, which resulted in the release of employee data.
The hacker sent an email to the payroll department that looked to be from Spiegel and asked for information on existing and former staffers. Snapchat didn’t release details about the scam but said it will refocus on its training programs about privacy security in the coming weeks.
“When something like this happens, all you can do is own up to your mistake, take care of the people affected, and learn from what went wrong,” Snapchat wrote in the apology note.
