{"id":5307,"date":"2018-10-29T10:58:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T06:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=5307"},"modified":"2018-10-29T10:58:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T06:58:46","slug":"snapchat-loses-another-2-million-users-as-it-struggles-to-match-copycat-rivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/10\/29\/snapchat-loses-another-2-million-users-as-it-struggles-to-match-copycat-rivals\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapchat loses another 2 million users as it struggles to match copycat rivals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snapchat has shed five million users over the last six months as it battles aggressive competition from Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n

The photo-sharing app suffered its second successive decline in popularity, falling from 188 million in the three months ending in June to 186 million by the end of September, according to its latest earnings report on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

That was on top of\u00a0a previous drop from 191 million earlier this year, following an unpopular redesign which Snap’s own chief executive, Evan Spiegel, called “rushed” and “frustrating”.<\/p>\n

But other figures showed mild improvement, with revenue 5-7pc higher than analysts had expected at $298 million (\u00a3232 million), and losses reduced by around 30 per cent.<\/p>\n

Shares in Snap Inc briefly spiked 9 per cent in after hours trading, before dropping to below Wednesday’s closing price of $6.60.<\/p>\n

“We are focusing our time and resources to expand our community, increase engagement, and improve monetisation,” Mr Spiegel told investors. “We have a significant opportunity to grow and broaden our global community over the long term.”<\/p>\n

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S<\/span>nap has\u00a0struggled to become profitable\u00a0since going public in March 2017, regularly missing revenue estimates and losing or replacing many senior members of staff.<\/p>\n

Mr Spiegel pitched Snapchat, where photos and videos disappear after 24 hours, as an “escape from social media… without the pressure of likes, comments and permanence”, drawing an implicit contrast with rivals such as Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n

B<\/span>ut his app has been\u00a0rapidly eclipsed by copycat offerings from Facebook itself, such as Facebook Stories, which claimed 300 million daily users in September, and Instagram Stories, which hit 400 million in June.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a conference call with analysts, Mr Spiegel said he planned to restore Snapchat’s user growth by targeting over-34-year-olds, who rarely use it at present, and people in the developing world, where most populations are younger on average than in the West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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H<\/span>e cited a forthcoming redesign of Snapchat’s app for Android, which is the dominant smartphone operating system in most developing countries, and an effort to reduce its use of mobile data, which is far more expensive in developing countries relative to income.<\/p>\n

Snap is at a disadvantage in many poorer markets because Facebook partners with local mobile phone companies to offer free data for its own apps.<\/p>\n

Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said Snap’s performance had been “consistent with our prior expectations” and that he believed it would maintain enough users to sustain a “niche” position in the advertising market.<\/p>\n

Snap’s shares have dropped by over 60 per cent since its IPO, but Mr Spiegel is insulated from shareholder anger by an unusual stock structure which gives him and his co-founder Robert Murphy 96 per cent of the voting rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I<\/span>ts most recent annual shareholder meeting consisted of an online conference call with associate general counsel Atul Porwal, which lasted 2 minutes and 46 seconds.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snapchat has shed five million users over the last six months as it battles aggressive competition from Facebook and Instagram. The photo-sharing app suffered its second successive decline in popularity, falling from 188 million in the three months ending in June to 186 million by the end of September, according to its latest earnings report …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5314,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions\/5314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}