Snap Inc. operates as a camera company in the US and internationally. The company offers Snapchat, which is a camera application that helps people to communicate through short videos and images. Snap, Inc. was formerly known as Snapchat, Inc., and was renamed Snap Inc. in September 2016. The company offers distributed mobile applications, especially camera platforms, and is engaged in offering innovative and differentiated mobile, communication, camera, content, and advertising products, and solutions worldwide. The company is primarily focused on product development, advertising technology, and large-scale infrastructure.
Snap, Inc. registered 436 issued patents and has around 722 filed patent applications in the US and other countries till December 31, 2018. These patents are associated with camera platforms and other technologies. The flagship product of Snap, Inc. is “Snapchat”.
Snap, Inc. also provides a Camera, which is a tool to personalize and add context to Snaps, and Snapchat is primarily used on mobile devices as a camera application.
Camera: A tool where Snapchat directly opens to the Camera, and the company also offers a wide variety of creative camera tools for easy personalization and addition of context to created Snaps. Additionally, the company offers contextually-relevant content and creative tools based on aspects such as location, time, and objects. 60% of the total daily active users use cameras every day on average in 2020.
Friends Page: This was the first version of the Snapchat application as a service, which allowed users to send Snaps back and forth and hence was named “Snapchat.” The friend page allows interacting, watching, and creating stories, chatting with groups, making video and voice calls, and communicating through a variety of contextual stickers and Bitmojis.
Discover: Discover surfaces the most interesting stories and shows from multiple publishers, creators, and the community, based on a user’s interests and subscriptions.
Snap Map: Displays a live map of the current location, popular stories, nearby friends, and a heatmap of recent Snaps posted. As of mid-2020, 200 million users use Snap Map every month.
Memories: Snapchat users are provided to save the Snaps options. The Snaps created by users can be saved in a searchable personal collection called memories and allows users to create Stories and Snaps from saved Snaps as well as the camera roll.
Spectacles: Tool to create memories by using Spectacles which creates Snaps. Spectacles connect effortlessly with Snapchat and capture video from a human perspective.
User Metrics
The daily active users increased to 265 million in Q4 2020 by 47 million net additional users are 22% increment Year-over-Year. DAUs were sequentially up on both Andriod and iOS platforms.
In Q3 2020, the average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 29% YoY as compared to the same quarter in the previous year with US$ 2.12. Considering region-wise, North America and Europe’s ARPU increased by 46% and 36% respectively making it to US$ 5.49 in North America and US$ 1.43 in Europe, whereas the Rest of the World’s ARPU decreased by 6% to US$ 0.95.
Snapchat Financial Results
In Q4 2020, the revenue increased by 62% YoY to 911 million USD.
Snapchat History
Quadrennium of 2012-2015
- In September 2011, Snapchat was launched on AppStore.
- In July 2012, Snapchat registered 110 Mn total images shared.
- In October 2012, the Snapchat community shared over 1,000 Mn snaps and registered over 20 Mn unique moments shared daily. In addition, Snapchat was launched in the Google Play Store for Android devices running on v2.2 or higher.
- In December 2012, Snapchat had approximately 50 Mn snaps shared on a daily basis.
- In February 2013, Snapchat launched the Android community Snapchat Video for Android users globally.
- In June 2013, a new iOS version was released in the App Store, and Snapchat registered over 200 Mn snaps shared daily.
- In October 2013, Snapchat launched the Snapchat Stories feature, in which Stories add Snaps together to create a narrative video.
- In December 2013, the Find Friends feature was introduced, which allows users to upload addresses and contacts book to Snapchat.
- In January 2014, Snapchat released an update for Android and iOS application users that improved Find Friends functionality and opt-out mandatory linking of phone numbers with usernames.
- In May 2014, Snapchat launched a Chat feature and signed an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In June, Snapchat signed an agreement with the Maryland Attorney General to strengthen a strong commitment to users’ privacy. The same month, Snapchat introduced the Our Story feature.
- In July 2014, Snapchat introduced the Geofilters feature to the camera application.
- In August 2014, Snapchat expanded its Our Story product to include live events.
- In October 2014, Snapchat launched the Our Campus Story feature and introduced an advertising feature.
- In November 2014, Snapchat introduced Snapcash in partnership with Square Cash company.
- In December 2014, Community Geofilters features were launched.
- In January 2015, Snapchat introduced Discover functionality.
- In May 2015, Snapchat launched Snapcodes as an easy way to add friends with an agenda to increase its daily user base.
- In July 2015, Snapchat took a major step by introducing Tap to View feature in the camera application.
- In November 2015, Snapchat launched Story Explorer on the New York and Los Angeles Live Stories platform.
Golden Year 2016:
In 2016, Snapchat launched various products, features, versions, and filters:
- In February, On-Demand Geofilters
- In March, Chat version 2.0
- In July, Memories, and Bitmoji
- In August, Geostickers
- In September, Spectacles
- In October, the Story Playlist
- In December, Snap-Groups feature, and Scissors and Paintbrush Creative Tools
Something in 2017:
- In April 2017, Snap, Inc. introduced New World Lenses feature in the Lenses module for 3D experiences
- In May 2017, Snap, Inc. reorganized layout creative tools
- In May 2017, Snap, Inc. created Custom Stories
- In Jun 2017, Snap, Inc. introduced Snap Map
- In Sept 2017, Snap, Inc. expanded the Publisher Stories module to include school newspapers
- In Oct 2017, Snap, Inc. launched Context Cards
- In November 2017, Snap, Inc. introduced New Snapchat: The new Snapchat separated the social from overall media pages.
- In December 2017, Snap, Inc. introduced Lens Studio
What Happened in 2018-2019:
Snap, Inc. launched and introduced various features and functionalities:
- In January 2018, Bitmoji Deluxe
- In March 2018, Explore on Snap Map and a new kind of Camera
- In April 2018, Group Video Chat, Snappables, and New Spectacles: Made especially for Summer
- In May 2018, Yellow a Launchpad.
- In June 2018, Snap Kit
- As of June 2018, snaps shared per minute were 2.08Mn
- In July 2018, Lens Explorer
- In September 2018, new styles of Spectacles: Nico and Veronica, Visual Search, and functionality that allowed the registration to vote on Snapchat!
- As of September 2018, 3 billion Snaps were created every day.
- 60% of Daily Active Users created Snaps every day to talk with their close friends and family.
- In October 2018, Snap Originals and Snap Camera
- In November 2018, Friend’s Bitmoji which was linked to Friendship Profile
- In the second half of the year 2019, Snap launched the next generation of AR Lenses that use deep neural networks to modify a person’s appearance in real-time, and over 200 million Snapchatters played with the new Lenses in its first two weeks.
- In Q2 of 2019, Snapchat launched Snap games, including 3 games that allow users to play as their Bitmoji.
- Additionally, the company was more likely to focus on advertisers off the sidelines, which in turn is expected to drive revenue growth in 2019.
What’s Happening in 2020:
- Snap Inc, announced expanded multi-year content partnerships with Disney, ESPN, NBC, ViacomCBS, the NBA, and the NFL.
- Launched the Happening Now feature for Discover which shows curated news from The Washington Post, ESPN, and BuzzFeed.
- Launched Snap Focus, an online learning portal where advertisers can learn about Snapchat advertising solutions.
Facts
- In Q2 2020, the average number of snaps created every day grew to 4 Bn.
- Due to improvements in its Android application, the snap chatter is sending 7% more snaps and 10% more retention rate.
- In Q2 2020, the Snapchatters opened Snapchat over 30 times every day.
- 397 million people can be reached through adverts on Snapchat.
- 61% of Snapchat’s ad audience are female and 38% are male.
- As of Q2 2020, the total time spent by snap chatters on the discover platform has increased by 45% YoY
- As of Q2 2020, Over 80% of the daily active users engage with augmented reality every day on average.
- Till March 2020, over 900,000 Lenses had been created through Lens Studio
- There is more than a 30x increase in the daily downloads of Snap Camera, a desktop app
- In Q3 2019, 100 discover channels reached a 10 Mn viewers monthly audience.
- As of June 2020, Snapchat ads reached 75% of the US audience of the age group 13–34, which was more than Instagram
- Snapchat reached 60% of the 13-34-year-olds in the UK, Canada, France, and Australia and 90% of the 13-24 age group of the US population, and 75% of the 13-34 age group of the US population.
- 100+ million Snapchatters have played Snap Games till June 2020
- In 60 seconds, 2.5 million snaps are taken in 2020
- Snap, In. is expected to launch its long-awaited Android redesign version
- According to data published in January 2019, during a survey, it was observed that among the global active Snapchat users, 13% of users were female, between the ages of 18 and 20 years
- There has been a 40% YoY increase in content engagement by the daily average number of users of age above 35
