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Gone in a Snap(chat)?

The social media platform that I want to take a closer look at this week is Snapchat. Confession time: I still use Snapchat almost daily, not to connect with my friends, but to get my daily allowance of trash magazine-esq content from The Daily Mail’s daily “news” stories. It’s my true guilty pleasure. However, I wanted to do my weekly mix-up this week on Snapchat because over the past two-ish years I have noticed a SHARP decline in usage from my peer group. I wanted to look into why this decline happened and who all is still using the app. 

So, what is Snapchat? Snapchat is an image and video messaging app, developed by Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown in 2011. It allows users to capture and send ‘Snaps’ that are only viewable for a set duration of 1 to 10 seconds or until closed by recipient, after which they are automatically deleted. Originally, this was just photos; video capability was added in 2012.

Snapchat, to me, was THE social media app of the mid-to-late 2010s for my friends and peers. It appeared that the app could do no wrong and was on pace to be as popular as Facebook. However, it was around 2016 that I noticed a steep decline in usership. Some people point to this decline as a direct result of Instagram launching their “story” feature for the app that mirrors a Snapchat story which disappears in 24 hours. Other people point towards when the former “Queen of Snapchat” Kylie Jenner voiced her displeasure towards the update to the homepage app. 

No matter what may have happened or what caused the downturn in my peers using the app, in my mind, they lost their power...or did they? According to eMarketer, I was wrong. Snapchat users reached 293 million in 2019, and will grow well over 350 million by 2023. That exceeds a previous forecast by over 10 million this year, and by over 20 million within four years.Snapchat growth rates are also expected to rise to over 14 percent. 

So who are all these new Snapchat users? After an abysmal year in 2018, Snapchat decided to renew their focus on its core Gen Z userbase, improve functionality, and advance in augmented reality. These changes improved, much to my surprise, a renewal in interest in the app. Snapchat North American’s daily active users (DAU) accounted for 83 million, with European DAUs coming to 64 million. US penetration rate among 18-24 year olds 94% (social media users) and 73% (US adults) according to Pew Research Center.

As a 28 year-old, I am out of their renewed optimal demographic, which makes sense why I feel like the app has been going the way of the Dodo. 

If a company is wanting to reach out to 18-24 year olds, Snapchat is a phenomenal way to do so. Advertisements on the app are strewn in with the content from videos and news outlets. So if you are watching the someone try to explode coke bottles with Mentos, right before the bottle erupts, up will pop a 2-5 second advertisement that is either a short video or image. 

When creating a social media or digital media strategy, if you want your company to use a certain platform like Snapchat, it has to make sense. I would not use Snapchat if I were the communications professional for AARP. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Snapchat was doing so well. This goes to show that it only takes a short amount of time to fall out of touch. This dive into how Snapchat is doing has taught me that it is important to keep abreast of the apps out there so I can stay sharp for my career.