Snapchat has 200 million active users but that is one active user base when it comes to the number of video views they rake in daily. On January this year, it was reported that Snapchat users were watching a total of 7 billion views a day, which was almost the same as Facebook’s count. This was seriously impressive from a network that has a fraction of Facebook’s user base and it seems they have topped that number again.
According to Recode, Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel was heard saying at a conference that the video views on the platform is now at 8 billion. Back in May last year, Evan Spiegel was interviewed by Bloomberg where he revealed that with the 100 million active users at the moment, users were watching more than 2 billion videos a day. In 9 months, that number has quadrupled levelling with Facebook’s count which was reported way back in November last year and an update to it was not highlighted in Facebook’s latest quarterly report.
Why is Snapchat doing so well in this aspect? Well unlike Facebook, Snapchat is primarily a photo and video platform where you view your friend’s stories, watch Live Stories on selected events or watch videos made by content partners on Discover. When you do the math of the number of video views (8 billion) over the number of active users (200 million), it averages to 40 views per user which is not a crazy amount if you think about it.
The company knows that watching videos on Snapchat is the core business and that is why they have features like the new web player, Story Explorer, new video filters and new Live score Geofilters to keep people engaged. As the network grows, the view count will continue growing and eventually pass Facebook and the veteran YouTube some time in the future.