Tracing Snapchat’s rapid growth
The growth of snapchat is astounding from its quick adoption to its valuation.
There are several lenses to look at the growth of snapchat through. First off, lets look at the diffusion of snapchat through networks of people where each person already had one or more social networks he/she used regularly.
Once snapchat spread to a few members of a small social circle, it was able to quickly spread to the rest of the group. It was able to do it functions better than anything Facebook or twitter could. This lead to a very high payoff from using snapchat, thus the product had a low threshold. Snapchat also didn’t trying to do emulate Facebook which meant people saw them as unique services.
As more and more people started using snapchat, the direct benefits of using it grew, and the payoff grew. The threshold kept being lowered, and the snapchat cascade was able to overcome a lot of clusters
Much like Facebook at the start, snapchat was initially used primarily on college and high school campuses. The price was obviously free, and the benefits of usage quickly grew which lead to snapchat having a very low tipping point. It was able to quickly pass the tipping point and the product had momentum to keep growing.
Snapchat has now become a phenomenon among all age groups as it has spread to the parents, grandparents, and younger siblings of the initial users. Much like Facebook, snapchat has broken into every age bracket successfully.
https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/snapchat