How Much Has Snapchat Grown in 4 Years?

Did you know Snapchat now has 100 million daily active users?

The mobile social network has been growing quickly, but how does its growth compare to that of other popular social platforms?

Launched in September 2011, Snapchat is now 4 years old. The team at WebpageFX analyzed how other major networks – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – were doing 4 years in, to assess the comparison.

Here's a closer look at where each network stood in terms of monthly active users, daily updates, new users, and revenue:Monthly active users

• Snapchat: an estimated 200 million
• Instagram: 180 million
• Facebook: 140 million
• Twitter: 30 million

Daily updates

• Snapchat: 400 million snaps per day
• Instagram: 70 million photos and videos per day
• Twitter: 50 million tweets per day
• Facebook: 13 million statuses per day

New users

• Snapchat: no exact number released, but it grew 57% in 2014
• Facebook: 600,000 new users per day
• Twitter: 370,000 new users per day
• Instagram: 130,000 new users per week (roughly 19,000 per day)

Revenue

• Facebook: $272 million
• Twitter: $45 million
• Instagram: purchased for $1 billion 2 years in
• Snapchat: $0

Judging by active users and daily growth, Snapchat’s 4-year growth is impressive.

That being said, it’s also important to note that the app was released at a time when most Internet users were already familiar with social sharing.

When Facebook was released, however, social media was a relatively new concept (even Myspace was only a year old!), and getting people to put personal information online was certainly much more challenging.

This makes the fact that their number of monthly active users was almost 75% of what Snapchat’s is today seem pretty impressive.

Then, of course, there’s the question of revenue. Facebook and Twitter were pulling strong numbers 4 years in, and although Facebook never released financial information about Instagram after acquiring the platform, $1 billion is a hefty amount for an app that was only 2 years old.

So where does that leave Snapchat? From the data above, it looks like they’re not in great shape – but that’s not quite the case.

The app raised $650 million at a $16 billion valuation back in May, after turning down a $3 billion offer from Facebook back in December.

Investors clearly see potential in Snapchat – likely because of its huge popularity with the hard-to-reach 18-24 demographic – but at this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to how the company will decide to turn a profit with their wildly successful app.