Analyzing Snapchat’s growth and success
http://www.msadverthinker.com/2016/03/14/has-snapchat-reached-its-tipping-point-to-mass-adoption/
http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchats-leap-over-instagram-signals-tipping-point-2016-4
Every product has what is called a tipping point. This is the point in popularity of a product, when growth starts to grow exponentially. Let’s say that for product X, the tipping point is 20%. That means at least 20% of the population needs to use it or it will eventually die out. Let’s also say that the stable point of product X is 80%. This means that once 20% usership has been reached, it will continue to grow until 80% of the population is using it. Regardless of what the actual tipping point of SnapChat is, it is clear that it has been reached. There are a number of signs which indicate this and a number of reasons for its success.
In a recent survey of 6,500 U.S. teens, done by Business Insider, 28% cited SnapChat as the most important social network compared to only 27% citing Instagram. Although it is only a 1% difference, what is important is the trend. Instagram has been around for much longer than SnapChat and has had more time to build up followership. The fact that SnapChat, a notably younger company, is beating Instagram in importance to teens is significant. According to the Business Insider article, “the app increased its popularity among teens by 9 percentage points from Fall 2015 to Spring 2016, the greatest increase of all social media platforms in the poll” (Business Insider). Another important comparison is to Facebook. SnapChat announced that they serve over 7 billion videos per day. For reference, Facebook serves over 8 billion but has 15 time more users than SnapChat (1.5B FB users compared to 100M SC users).
Another big sign that SnapChat is over its tipping point is its growth in the older demographics. Snapchat was designed and marketed mainly for 18-24 year olds and this has been its largest usership traditionally. Coming in a close second is the 25-34 year olds. But what has been happening is that over the past few years, “Snapchat has added 25-to-34-year-old users (103 percent) and older-than-35 users (84 percent) faster than 18-to-24-year-old users (56 percent) [and it now marks] 12 percent of its nearly 50 million daily users in the U.S. as 35 to 54” (Reeves). When you parents start using a technology designed for you, you know it has spread and it has spread for good reason.
For one, Snapchat has done a very good job of differentiating itself from other popular social media apps. There is a unique niche that Snapchat occupies which is quite different from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even Youtube. This means that people do not have to choose whether they should switch to Snapchat from a preexisting application, they can use both. There are uses for Snapchat that are unique and this in itself provides incentive to use the app. Additionally, since it is a social media app, it has to be worthwhile socially to use it. No one is going to want to use an app is none of their friends are on it. Snapchat now has a huge celebrity followership which makes people want to use if regardless of how many of your friends are on it. Once this place has been reached, and it has, growth skyrockets.