Snapchat quietly snaps back daily users
The Snapchat app is rapidly adding users, even as Twitter steals the limelight, writes Nick Bonyhady.
As the internet brawled over Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, with its 229 million users, the company behind Snapchat reported its quarterly numbers to much less fanfare.
Snap Inc’s daily active users, which are measured as people who actually log on to its app within a 24-hour period in contrast to Twitter’s fuzzy ‘‘monetisable’’ figure, were up by 52 million to 332 million.
It is an impressive reversal from a company that just four years ago was definitively not cool. That year, 2018, was when model and makeup mogul Kylie Jenner, who had been one of Snapchat’s most prominent users, tweeted this after a redesign: ‘‘Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me. . . ugh this is so sad.’’
The stock dropped more than US$1 billion (NZ$1.53b). Its numbers showed user growth slowing. For the tail end of Millennials and early Generation Z, divided by the year 1997, the selfdeleting photo-sharing app made an initial splash quickly after its launch in 2011 and stayed popular until about 2017.
Stories, a feature launched in 2013 that let users share photos or videos with a wider range of friends but still only for 24 hours, was a key reason for its success. Instagram copied the feature in 2016, taking some of Snapchat’s lustre.
Snap’s co-founder and chief technology officer Bobby Murphy, 33, doesn’t see a single piece of Snapchat as responsible for its resurgence.
‘‘We continue to see really strong engagement around Snapchat’s core functionality, which is talking to friends through the camera,’’ Murphy says via a video call from Los Angeles.
‘‘That’s what has been one of our great enablers for all the work that we’re doing in augmented reality, where we’re continuing to evolve the way people use our camera in different ways.’’
Snapchat’s map, where users can see where their friends are taking photos from; its Discover tab, where stories from media outlets and other users can pop up even if you aren’t following them; and Spotlight, its endless video feed that resembles a TikTok clone, are all contributing, Murphy says.
On screen, Murphy is friendly but sticks closely to Snap talking points. Asked about Snap’s share price, down from US$75 in October to less than US$30 (NZ$45.86) in late April, he says the company is focused on the long term.
Asked about the irony of Instagram copying Snapchat’s Stories feature only for Snapchat to then ape TikTok’s feed in its Spotlight product, he talks about how good Spotlight is.
Asked whether there is a post-Jenner generation driving Snapchat’s growth, Murphy says: ‘‘We certainly see that our core Snapchat app resonates really well with our younger 13-to-25 range demographic. That said, we even see strong engagement outside of that as well.’’
What clearly excites Murphy, who gives relatively few interviews, is Snapchat’s rapidly growing augmented reality work. Through Snapchat’s camera, users can morph into a horse, a nonna, or a fish. Popular landmarks can come to life, some in a disconcerting style reminiscent of the 2010 movie Inception.
Others show more about the historical figures they memorialise. Murphy’s favourite is a wall of memories at Cinderella’s Castle in Disney’s Magic Kingdom Park in Florida, where visitors can submit a photo to an ever-expanding mural visible through an app.
‘‘It’s just a fantastic demonstration of our location technology and a great way for any park visitors to connect,’’ he says.
It must be the technology that Murphy finds most appealing, because he has not yet been there to see it in person.
These features are undeniably fun, though some focus squarely on physical attractiveness, making a user more square-jawed, for example. Paired with Snapchat’s Discover tab, which is filled with models and clickbait headlines like ‘‘This Kiss Challenge Goes Crazy Viral!’’, it is the sort of content that could spark parental anxiety for body-conscious teens.
Some is from independent publishers that Snapchat does not pre-moderate; other posts are from influencers it checks. All content is checked against the company’s policies once it goes live, Snapchat says, to ensure none is hateful or harmful.
There is another kind of augmented reality technology that Snapchat is betting on: virtual try-ons of garments and shoes. It works reasonably well, with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age donning a virtual North Face jacket and Louis Vuitton sunglasses.
The advantage is you can see how they look on you. The downside is that you are not as good-looking as the model who wears the items in store photos, and the try-on sometimes glitches a little. The idea is that eventually users will be able to browse a host of clothes directly through Snapchat and buy quickly.
In some ways, Snapchat’s focus on online try-ons of real-world objects is the opposite to how other social media companies, such as Facebook owner Meta, are going. Meta sees the metaverse, an ill-defined concept that at its core refers to the idea of fully virtual simulated environments, as the future of its US$550b company.
Murphy doesn’t mention Meta directly, but clearly has some scepticism about the relative promise of the metaverse. ‘‘We see augmented reality as a much bigger opportunity than the metaverse,’’ Murphy says. The reason is that it allows for more interaction with the real world.
Consider, for example, a construction firm meeting where you can see your real colleagues through special glasses but also an augmented reality version of the planned bridge that you are building. That seems plainly more compelling than a fully virtual tour of a site.
Murphy is more positive about nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. These are signifiers of ownership of some form of digital asset, like a digital illustration, held on a blockchain.
So far, many NFT investments have proved speculative. Values soar and crash because they are not tied to something of inherent value.
Snapchat seems as good a place as any to change that because it is not hard to imagine people paying to incorporate art, filters or augmented reality effects into their snaps (though that could be accomplished without NFTs).
‘‘The concept of NFTs is certainly very interesting,’’ Murphy says. ‘‘Just insofar as it is becoming a format that allows for compensation for digital assets. And I think you’re totally right that there is potential in augmented reality. So yeah, it’s an area that we’re starting to explore a little bit.’’ – Sydney Morning Herald