Snapchat Puts Friendship First to Reach 397 Million users

Snapchat has almost reached the 400 million user milestone. The social media app that focuses on friendships with friends and family continues to grow its userbase around the world. In fact, snapchatters create over 5 billion Snaps each and every day. Sharing is caring!

Snapchat isn’t a social discovery app in particular, but represents the end goal of a lot of social discovery: Friends you can share the joys, peculiarities and oddities of life with day-to-day. While it has replicated stories in a similar way to other social media platforms. Snapchat’s appeal is in the fleeting moments who only want to share with friends. Snapchat has put a focus on this aspect in recent months to keep its offering fresh and compelling.

For example, on Sunday, International Friendship day, the company released a new feature that highlights and delivers personalised throwbacks of you and your friends. Snapchatters found a unique and personalised story in their feed to access the content. Snapchat mega star Tinx, also has been partnered with for the day, offering her advice on how to maintain strong friendships directly on the platform through stories. 

Snapchat’s biggest growth has been in Asian markets, like India. In total, 14 million extra daily active users were added in Q2 of 2023. Only a million of those came from North America and Europe. The rest came from markets such as India, where there is a huge potential growth as the prevalence of smartphones and connective technology grow and expand. 

While not social discovery outright – Snapchat’s continued success taps into the same thing that makes social discovery such a potentially huge market. More and more people realise that it is those close friendships that matter and enrich our lives. Social Media platforms that expose to a huge and wide audience for all their benefits, have a litany of drawbacks. Apps focussed on making smaller, more genuine connections, for many, are the way forward.