Snap has announced that its Snapchat social media platform has passed 800 million monthly active users. As a reference point, the platform said that it had accrued 750 million monthly active users last February.
With this many users, Snapchat stays in 10th place among social media services; Telegram reported in August that it had 800 million monthly active users in August but this figure has probably grown too.
With its focus on snapping pictures and messaging friends, Snapchat’s closest competitors are probably Instagram and Messenger, they have 2 billion and 1.03 billion monthly active users respectively.
Commenting on the news and its impact, Snapchat said:
"Over the years, we’ve prioritized doing what’s right for our community and stayed true to our values. We’ve continued to focus on helping Snapchatters foster connections with friends and family, rather than building mass networks of people they barely know.
And those connections have been shown to make people happier — Snapchatters report higher satisfaction with the quality of friendships and relationships with family than non-Snapchatters, and over 90% of Snapchatters say they feel comfortable, happy and connected when using our service."
While it"s good news for the company that it’s growing its user base, the company had a torrid time on Tuesday in after hours trading after revenue targets were missed and the share price dropped from around $17.70 to $11.75.
The company has not been profitable since 2019 but it was improving the situation up to 2022 when its losses exceeded those of 2019. In the first three quarters of 2023 it also reported losses instead of profits.
A day before the stock price plunged on the latest financial results, Snap announced that it was firing 10% of its employees. The company will now no doubt be hoping that investors remember this key piece of information because it means losses for the company won"t be so great as it"s not spending as much money.