Initially launched in the summer, precisely July of 2011, Snapchat was called “Picaboo.” It was established as an “ephemeral” platform for messaging. Initially, it was available only on iOS phones. It was a video, and messaging platform developed by Stanford University students named Bobby Murphy, Reggie Brown, and Evan Spiegel. Picaboo didn’t get immediate success and had only 127 users for quite a few months. When Picaboo was rebranded to Snapchat, it was also released on Android.
That was when Snapchat started taking flight. Snapchat is that app, which allows you to capture and upload “snaps” that “self-destructs” in the time you choose, quickly becoming a favorite among people. Snapchat reached the milestone of a user base of a hundred thousand people who logged in daily, just within a year. Initially, a person could send photos as snaps, but video-sharing was added too in 2012.
Evan Spiegel has expressed in many interviews that Snapchat revolves around the camera which comes as its central concept. He even went far enough to call Snapchat a “camera company.” Though various apps revolved around photo-sharing, Instagram was one of the most popular, but Snapchat stood out. Snapchat was different from the other apps because it allows people to communicate just through pictures. It was the concept that gave Snapchat its USP. Since its launch, Snapchat has continued to use many features, including “Stories” in 2013, that Instagram has replicated.
One can even say Snapchat had a “stories” feature before it got cool!
In An age that is all about permanence and timelines, Snapchat has offered people a whole new way of communicating. The younger generation quickly took to the app because of the ever-changing and more unique features at frequent intervals. But not just young people, Snapchat caught the eye of marketers and brands as well. Since Snapchat has a vast platform consisting of many young people, brands who targeted Gen’ Z ers and Millennials were in luck.
AT present, Snapchat boasts of over 265 million active users who log into the platform daily. The app’s financial year-end growth is pretty strong, too, with the annual revenue amounting to 2.5 billion USD just last year.
In this blog, you would understand all about Snapchat demographics, including the app’s daily active user base depending on age, country, and even gender.
How popular is Snapchat?
Besides being a trendy platform for the world’s younger population and becoming more attractive to advertisers worldwide, Snapchat has now emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms globally. According to the stats, experts predicted Snapchat’s revenue for 2021 to cross 2.6 billion USD, rising from the income of 1.53 billion USD that amounted to 2019.
Snapchat is primarily a mobile-based social media app where most log-ins are done through mobile phones only. When it came to the style of communicating, Snapchat wanted to replicate how people interact or talk to each other usually. Snapchat wanted to mirror how these interactions were not permanent and were not documented anywhere, much like reality.
According to Snapchat users in the US, the main reason that people used Snapchat was to remain connected with their family and friends. After Snapchat brought on its “Stories” feature, upgraded from the “snaps” feature where photos “self-destructed” in about 1 to 10 seconds, Snapchat quickly became a favorite among many. Soon, users could upload a series of snaps in chronological order. While most of these “stories” were time-limited and ‘disappeared’ in 24 hours, Snapchat has now upgraded another feature called “Memories.” Users could thus, save some Snaps on their mobile or the Snapchat gallery.
The sharing of photos documenting every day in the form of “stories” was quickly adopted by other social media platforms by Instagram, Facebook, and even Whatsapp Messenger. Snapchat also added the map feature in which users could share their location with other people in their Snaps. Users could also use the “Crowd Surf” feature to see video footage from various viewpoints when many people were filming on Snapchat at the exact moment.
In 2016, the parent company of Snapchat, Snap Inc., started selling ‘Spectacles.’ These glasses had a built-in camera, and they could record any video for 10 seconds. This video could then be posted online via a paired smartphone.
Snap Inc. also owns Zenly and Bitmoji. In 2018, Snapchat will move away from the content solely generated by users. Snapchat Originals started featuring video content that companies had shot for the app specifically. Snapchat Originals has been in contact with such names as NBCUniversal (which co-owns a studio with Snapchat), ABC, the BBC, A&E Networks, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, etc. In April 2019, Snapchat brought in “Snap Games,” a new gaming platform on the popular social media app.
Snapchat can be said as a real pioneer in bringing AR or augmented reality to the audience through the filters on the app. Snapchat first opened AR features to external developers in 2018 despite the stiff competition that Snapchat faces from other social media platforms. The users of Snapchat are arguably the most engaged as around 48% of Snapchat users in the United States post content on Snapchat at least every week. Only Facebook and Whatsapp Messenger could boast of a more active user base.
What is the number of people using Snapchat?
In 2021, Snapchat has over 229 million active users worldwide who use the app daily. This number is a rise from last year’s user base of 190 million. Thus, Snapchat saw a 20.5 percent growth in the user base within a year. The latest statistics on Snapchat seem pretty promising for these social media apps. It has been great, especially since many users (millions) quit Snapchat in 2018 due to its redesign, which didn’t stick well for many people. In 2018, the number of Snapchatters fell from 191 million to One hundred eighty-six million in the first and second quarters. The redesign was also criticized publicly by Kylie Jenner.
A single tweet by Kylie Jenner knocked off 1 billion USD off the market value of the company. Evan Spiegel, The CEO, also received a petition signed by over 1.2 million Snapchatters who called for the redesign to be removed. 2018 was a challenging year for Snapchat but since then, Snapchat’s fortunes have changed. Finally, Snapchat started picking up again in the early part of 2019.
Keeping the dip in 2018 asides, the number of users on Snapchat has always been on the rise since it was first rebranded from Picaboo to Snapchat. The figures documenting the growth of the app for five years have been nothing but very impressive. In the first half of 2015, only 80 million active users on Snapchat used it daily. If you consider the statistics now, there has been a whopping 186 % increase in the user base in only five years.
Snap Inc, the parent company of this app, is also doing its best and keeps its users engaged with frequent updates and newer features. Snapchat announced that it tested a feature, that is, the vertical swipe navigation, just recently.
Tiktok first popularised this feature to help users a more coherent experience when switching between one social media app.
Snapchat Demographics By
Daily Users –
Snapchat had recorded around 238 million active users who perused the app daily in the second quarter of the year 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, this photo-sharing app recorded 229 million active users who used the app daily. In the second quarter of the year 2019, Snapchat reported around 203 million active users who used Snapchat daily. Whether or not countries and economies are affected by the pandemic, photo apps seem pretty immune from all the adversities.
The adversities taking place in the world due to the global pandemic didn’t affect Snapchat, at least in DAU. Thus, you can see pretty well that Snapchat has seen continuous growth for six quarters over the last three years. After Snapchat dipped badly in the year 2018 because of the infamous redesign, it gradually picked up. After improving the statistics of the first quarter of 2018, Snapchat recorded that the active user base had dropped from 191 million to 190 million and even further down to 186 million users, Snapchat started growing. It saw the year-on-year increase for the very first time, recording a whopping 203 million user base.
In terms of percentage, Snapchat’s user base grew the most in the years from 2014 to 2017. In the first quarter of 2014, Snapchat users counted a little over 40 million, most of whom were from North America, users from the States. By the first quarter of 2015, the user base doubled to 80 million. Even in the first quarter of 2017, the user base doubled again. Thus in Q1 of 2017, Snapchat recorded 166 million active users who were using the app daily. Snapchat has grown pretty steadily since then.
Daily usage in Q2 2020 – BY COUNTRY
In the second quarter of the year 2020, users all over North America accounted for the most significant percentage of the Snapchat daily user base. This user base also included users from Central America, The Caribbean, and Mexico. There were around 90 million users from all over the continent itself. Users in the rest of the world accounted for 70 million daily users.
This user base of 70 million people had overtaken the number of users in Europe in the previous quarter. Users from Europe also included users from Turkey and Russia. They counted to about 71 million users in the second quarter of last year.
The daily user percentage in the rest of the world has increased 13 times than in the first quarter of 2014. There has been a five-times growth and 3.5 times growth in the daily active users in Europe and North America, respectively, since 2014. Alternatively, these statistics display how uneven the state of playback was in the year 2014. For a shorter term, the trends that came in for a shorter period improved the platform and told a similar story on the app demographics’ uneven state.
Since the first quarter of 2019, Snapchat has continued to add 10 million active users every quarter from North America. This growth is significant compared to other such social media apps.
North American users make up the core demographic of the daily active user base of Snapchat. But they have now come to occupy a smaller percentage of the total user base of Snapchat. Compared to the users in the rest of the world and Europe, the ratio is lesser than before. European users and those from the rest of the world are now coming on par with North American users.
In the initial quarter of 2014, the percentage of North America users made up 57 percent of Snapchat users. In turn, European users made up 30 percent, and the rest of the world made up 13 percent of the whole user base.
By the second quarter of the year 2020, Snapchat users from North America made up 38 percent of Snapchat users. The number of users from Europe remained the same at 30 percent of the entire user base. Users from the rest of the world accounted for 32 percent of the user base of Snapchat. In your opinion, would it be strange to see the percentage of North American users overcome by the rest of the world? If you consider how Snapchat has targeted the rising youth markets all over the world?
The United States may remain the biggest market for Snapchat now, but we must look at some other statistics. The number of active users in the United States tops the demographics list with 103 million users. India is in second place with 28 million active users as of the first quarter of 2020.
Thus, experts can predict that the percentage of Snapchat may change. The balance may tilt considering the power of the youth markets in Asia. The figures given here have primarily been drawn from different external sources. So do bear in mind that these numbers may not be the same as Snapchat’s official database says on the number of daily active users.
The rankings given above are pretty similar to the present scenario anyway, and there are quite a few interesting facts. According to country and Turkey, Saudi Arabia ranks fifth in the Snapchat user demographics in the tenth place in this demographic list. Thus, you really cannot deny or ignore the global reach of Snapchat even though it has a US-ward tilt.
Usage by different age groups
As already mentioned before, Snapchat is a popular app primarily in the youth market. Generation Z and Millenials make up the core user base of Snapchat. According to various reports, Snapchat targets the same audience as Instagram. The userbase of this app is concentrated among those users in the United States. They are between the ages of 18 to 24. The youth makes up about 73 percent of the total number of users in the US.
When you consider the next demographic, the people aged between 25 to 29 years old, the usage of Snapchat would have fallen to 47 percent. The percentage continues to fall as we move higher up in the demographic. Consider the people between 30 to 49 years. The user base falls to 25 percent, 9 percent in the age group between 50 to 64-year-olds, and a meager 3 percent when considering people above 65.
It is safe to say that Snapchat came to become so popular among social media apps because of the ever-growing youth market in the world. This app’s growth made the CEO Evan Spiegel and its co-founders some of the wealthiest social media entrepreneurs worldwide. In some interviews with some US teenagers, they said that Snapchat was quickly the most vital social media app of this generation. They even said that it was ahead of its competitor social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Consequently, it has been recorded that 48 percent of the internet users in users aged between 15 to 25 used Snapchat. This percentage of users is easily the highest reach of users compared to any other age group. If you look at the aspect of user satisfaction of Snapchat, the app’s performance is between fair and satisfactory.
According to the data found from recent surveys, Snapchat scored 72 points out of 100 based on how good it was to customers. It ranked ahead of both Facebook and Twitter. But it was behind Pinterest and its forever rival Instagram.
Use by gender – demographics
The audience of Snapchat has different demographics based on gender, as is expected. It has been seen that females users take up about 57.4 percent of the total number of Snapchat users. At the same time, the male audience accounts for 40. Nine percent of the entire userbase. This demographic keeps on changing based on country, region, and age as well. But figures given above are an average of what Snapchat’s audience’s constitution is, based on people’s genders. Different sites on the internet could provide you other figures as well. Thus, unless you see the official date by Snapchat, it isn’t easy to pinpoint the exact percentages.
Revenue
In the year 2020, Snapchat generated annual revenue of 2.5 billion USD. This revenue was 118.6 percent from the revenues generated in the last two years, 2018 and 2019. In 2014, Snapchat had made an annual revenue of 3.1 million USD which gradually increased to 59 million and 404 million respectively in the years 2015 and 2016. In 2017 and 2018, Snapchat’s annual revenue grew again and amounted to 825 million and 1.18 billion USD, respectively. Even after the dip in the user base of Snapchat in 2018, the yearly revenue recorded by Snapchat by the end of 2019 was 1. 7 billion USD.
Revenue according to country
North America:
North American users make up most of the user base of Snapchat. North American users also constitute people from the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico. These users have contributed approximately 71 percent of the annual revenue of Snapchat, amounting to a whopping 1.77 billion USD in 2020. In 2016 and 2017, the North American users contributed around 363 million Usd and 675 million USD. The later years saw a rapid increase. In 2018 and 2019, Snapchat made an annual revenue of 781 million and 1.06 billion USD from North American users.
Europe:
The userbase of Europe also includes users from Turkey and Russia. They contributed around 15.9 percent of the annual revenue of Snpachat in 2020. The yearly income of Snapchat has been on the rise since 2017. It has grown up to 4 times since then. In 2016, European users contributed 36 million USD. From then onwards, they have been contributing 102 million, 186 million, and 269 million USD respectively for the years 2017 to 2019.
Rest of the World:
The users from Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America contribute a percentage of 13.28 to the annual revenue of Snapchat, which amounts to 333 million dollars. The yearly income contributed by these users has been on the increase since 2016. In 2016, they contributed about 6 million Usd to the annual revenue, 60 million USD in 2017, 170 million in 2018, and 263 million USD in 2019.
Conclusion
And that brings us to the end of documenting the demographic statistics of Snapchat. Not only do you now know how many people had been using the social media app since its launch, you see the userbase it has now. Through this blog, you also must have got the idea of how people worldwide use this app and how they contribute to its growth and revenue. Snapchat has done exceptionally well in the youth markets of North America as well as Europe. But the development of users in those regions is slowing down. Now, it is being seen that the Asian youth markets are starting to own the userbase of Snapchat.
Thus, this poses an important question, which is also foo for thought you, the readers of this blog. Do you think Snapchat will continue to grow more in the Asian markets from now on? Do you believe Snapchat had had its fun as one of the most popular social media apps and will start to fade?
