Snapchat tries to retain younger audience in social media battlefield

Digital Originals

Snapchat tries to retain younger audience in social media battlefield

Snapchat’s got a problem. Users are disappearing, just like its messages, from 191 million a day down to 188 million. 

Snapchat’s been around since 2011. Its main appeal is the under 25s.

Filters and stories are its big selling point.

But now Facebook-owned Instagram is getting double the users.

“Facebook has basically used Instagram to clone Snapchat’s most popular product: these stories that disappear after a certain amount of time. So Snapchat has billed itself as a camera company so it may see some play there where they do have a lot of traction with these filters that they’ve been using. Instagram has cloned that as well,” says Henry Meier from the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for a reported three billion dollars.

Snapchat turned it down. Its owners became billionaires overnight when the company went public.

It’s just brought $250 million in from a Saudi Prince because there is still one selling point Snapchat has over its rivals: a younger audience.

“Advertisers like these young audiences because they can hook a younger person on a product, they have a consumer for life potentially. So that’s a huge selling point for Snapchat at this stage of the game and that’s why we’re continuing to see some inbound money to the company,” Meier says.