On Tuesday, Snapchat featured Nairobi in a story dubbed “Nairobi Life” where it showed snaps from users in Nairobi to the rest of the world. Snapchat allows users to take photos, record videos, add tect and drawings and send them to other users. These snaps are time controlled offering the sender a chance to set a time limit of how long the recipients can view which is usually between 1 to 10 seconds after which they self destruct and are deleted from Snapchat servers.
The service has 100 million daily users as at now, which was confirmed by Snapchat CEO at the Recode Conference. Snapchat also internally measures active hourly users, and plans to release the data to the public in due course. Snapchat is currently valued at $15 billion and is seeking ways to increase its revenue from advertising.
The “Nairobi Life” story is one of Snapchat’s revenue streams that allows companies to buy a placement in a story. A story is basically a collection of photos, videos from people based on an event or location. Advertisers can then have their products included in a story.
Last year, Snapchat turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook seeking to chart its own path. The 100 million users still dwarf Facebooks 936 million daily users but has a high growth potential with the increased uptake of smartphones among its target market which is 13 to 34 year old individuals.
