Mobile messaging app Snapchat may have had more of a reason to shun Facebook's acquisition offer than many realized. That's because the company is now processing more than 400 million snaps shared each day according to CEO Evan Spiegel as reported by TechCrunch.
That's up from just 200 million snaps in June and 350 million in September. That's some extremely impressive growth that surpasses photo sharing activities on both Facebook and Instagram combined. The social networking king accepts some 350 million new photos each day from more than a billion users while Instagram's 150 million users upload rough 50 million images each day.
Odds are, Snapchat is counting photos and videos in addition to broadcast snaps. The latter is simply a photo or video sent to multiple recipients which effectively turns one snap into many. Either way you slice it, that's a lot of sharing from a startup that's only a couple of years old.
Key to Snapchat's success is the fact that shares are only seen for a brief time and only by select recipients before they self-destruct. With outlets like Facebook and Instagram, however, content lives on forever and can be viewed by many more people.
If you recall, Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion (in cash) acquisition offer from Facebook last week. At last check, the startup is said to be working a massive round of funding that would put the company's valuation at around $4 billion.