Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t buy Snapchat – so now he’s beating it.
Back in 2013, Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel turned down a $3 billion takeover offer from Zuckerberg, but lately the image messaging and multimedia app company has been struggling to keep up with its biggest competitor.
No, not Facebook. Instagram.
After Facebook acquired the photo-sharing app for $1 billion in 2012, Zuckerberg has managed to turn it into a key growth driver and a potential Snapchat killer. Last August, Instagram rolled out it’s own Snapchat-like “stories” feature, and for Snapchat it’s all been downhill from there.
Just this week, Snapchat saw its shares fall well below their IPO price of $17 a share for the first time. This comes after one of the investment banks that helped the company go public decided to downgrade its stock over worries about…yes, you guessed it, Instagram.
The bank’s worries probably have something to do with all the new features and tools Instagram has rolled out recently, with the latest being a ‘fun new face filter.’ According to a company blog post, the filter lets users express themselves “and turn an ordinary selfie into something fun and entertaining.”
David Pierpont, vice president of performance media for digital ad agency Ansira is already declaring the Instagram vs Snapchat battle over, identifying Instagram Stories as the death knell for Snapchat. Speaking to CNBC, Pierpont credits Instagram’s success not only to its mimicking of Snapchat features, but primarily to its ability to connect advertisers with Facebook’s more than 2 billion users.
Instagram’s growth has also shot up this year, with over 700 million users in April, while Snapchat continues behind at just 166 million average daily users.
For more on the story, see the full report at CNBC.com.
Danita White for TechFunnel.com
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