Snapchat now has more active daily users than Twitter

Snapchat is fast becoming one of the most popular social networks in the world, with a reported 150 million people now using the app every day.

The photo and video messaging app has overtaken Twitter and its 140 million active daily users.

Snapchat has added 40 million accounts in the last six months.

It's claimed that the service had 110 million daily users in December, which launched in 2011 - five years after Twitter.

However, Twitter is still ahead on active monthly users - it has 310 million compared to Snapchat's 200 million.

 The new figures were revealed by Bloomberg, which claims that the numbers were shared by "people familiar with the matter".

Snapchat has evolved rapidly from a simple exchange of quickly-deleted photos into one where users can tell the story of their everyday lives with photos and videos.

Oh, and users can throw up rainbows whenever they like.

Snapchat was created at Stanford University by Evan Spiegel, with help from Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown.

It was first known as Picaboo and was received poorly by classmates when Evan Spiegel presented the concept as his final project in his product design major.

In contrast, Twitter has appeared to struggle in evolving its offering to users beyond its text-based updates.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, recently praised Snapchat saying his own service can seem "confusing" to newcomers.

"I think [Snapchat's] very modern," he said at this week's Code Conference in California.

"It's recognising that we're going to press buttons less and gesture more."

Two years ago, Snapchat was making headlines as a place where pop stars sent naked photos to their fans.

Now it is overtaking one of the biggest names in the game.

They both have some way to go to catch up with Facebook's 1.6 billion active monthly users though, while Instagram is on around 400 million users.

Author: 
BBC