PATTERN RECOGNITION: Snappy IPO has poor financials
But the image and video-based social media app Snapchat has given selfie-obsessed users exactly what they want
The remarkable thing is not only that Snapchat has 158m daily users; it’s that two-thirds of them update their content every single day. That’s about 100m people posting something new daily, which explains why parent company Snap will be valued at US$25bn when it goes public this year. Its users check the app 18 times on average every day, sending 2.5bn images and messages. With its short video clips called “stories” and filters that allow users to tweak images with stickers and other visual enhancements, Snap has captured the popular imagination. Better yet, it has captured a decidedly younger market than Facebook, which itself is edging towards 2bn users. Both of these trends show just how much social media has become part of our lives.Snapchat is a glimpse of what the social media world is going to look like, especially in this video-intensive, selfie-obsessed mobile world. So much so that Facebook has copied Snapchat 16 times in various ways over the years, including in new feat...
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