Snapchat
In 2013, Snapchat, the photo and video messaging app company, reportedly turned down a $3 billion cash acquisition offer from Facebook. Just over 2 years later, Snapchat hit a new milestone of 6 billion daily video views, according to the Financial Times, making their once-controversial rejection of the offer look increasingly justified. This achievement puts them just behind Facebook’s 8 billion video views per day.
Only 6 months ago, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel reported that the company was attracting 2 billion video views per day, making the latest numbers even more remarkable. During that period, Facebook was more than doubling Snapchat’s views.
It’s worth noting that platforms often have disparate measures for what a “view” is. For example, Facebook considers a view as any user who watches for more than 3 seconds, while a YouTube viewer would have to watch for 30 seconds for Google to count it as a view. As a result, advertisers often express concern that users are barely watching the paid placement videos, and so their advertising dollars are going to waste. Still, the Snapchat’s 6 billion daily views promise great things for the company.
Snapchat has successfully monetized their views, by focusing on and growing their video content advertising, one of the most profitable areas in social media. After increasing usability for advertisers, by offering video ads and media partnerships, Snapchat was valued at $19 billion in February 2015.
The 6 billion daily view milestone comes after a recent controversy, after changed its privacy policy. In these new privacy terms, the company reserved the right to republish, modify, and save user photos. Angry and concerned users forced Snapchat to go on the defensive, and publish a blog post clarifying the changes. They assured their 100 million daily users that their standard policy is to delete all photos from servers once they have been viewed or expired.
Snapchat tops 6 billion views, closes in on Facebook
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