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I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or c

I don't mean this to be mean, but do people really believe these active user counts at face value? I personally see these numbers and assume half are bots or controlled marketing accounts to boost viewers or spam comments. Just going off personal experience using these sort of apps.

olah_1 4y ago
Certainly there are many, many bots. BUT, I have personally noticed a resurgence in snapchat popularity. It did indeed die, but it came back after (I think) people have gotten burnt out on the super public nature of Instagram. Snapchat is more amenable to having a "persona". If you make an second account on Instagram, Instagram will literally start recommending it to the followers of your main account. So Snapchat just allows for a use case that Instagram simply does not. Instagram is the new Facebook. They are not friendly to being anonymous or pseudonymous.
ffggvv 4y ago
the growth is about in line with independent surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media...
- thawaya3113 4y ago
  Huh? That chart shows Snapchat usage declining, whereas they have been claiming steady growth. A lot of people on this thread are saying that people are doubting Snapchat’s numbers because they are old. And that’s definitely part of it. But, it’s also all the other metrics that don’t add up. The extremely low revenue per user, for example. Even lower than Twitter, for example, which has very high global penetration (therefore most of their users are from places with much lower costs of living than the US and therefore don’t generate as much as revenue), and has users spread across lower value platforms like the web, as opposed to Snapchat’s app only interface. On a personal level, I know someone whose business placed a bunch of ads in different social media (clothing primarily aimed at college aged women, but with a customer base that ranges from teens to late 20s) and had remarkably low engagement on Snapchat. And all of this is despite Apple signal boosting Snapchat for several events in a row now.
caleb-allen 4y ago
I would guess that you could uncover this information in Snapchat's 10K filings. In fact, I found the answer to your question on the 4th page of their annual filing to shareholders[1]: > While these metrics are determined based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our products are used across large populations globally. For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. We have not determined the number of such multiple accounts. It seems to me that Snap is quite open about their active user counts. [1] https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813 https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813
- admiral33 4y ago
  > For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. Weird. If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life. More time in app. I'd also expect there are fewer incentives for creating bots on snap versus other platforms. Its a messaging app, people only use it with people they know.
  - Bilal_io 4y ago
    Probably the quality of the content in the app goes down dramatically if you allow multiple accounts. But I can see a use case where people need to manage their business profile and their personal one, or a celebrity needing to have an unknown account for close people only. I am sure there are many more.
  - jasonlotito 4y ago
    > If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life No. In my experience, it's because they lost access to the older account for whatever reason. Accounts are cheap and ephemeral and forgot password flows are horrible.
liuliu 4y ago
Snapchat has been more proactive on fighting bot than other competitors. You can easily copy the cookie from instagram.com and write a bot with puppeteer. You cannot just sniff the traffic from Snapchat app and hope to write a bot with that. It has been aggressive at binary obfuscation for request signing, and cracking down the 3rd party mods (such as the Snapchat Phantom mod).
- password4321 4y ago
  https://casper.io https://casper.io -> https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322 https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322 > iPhone farm to generate security tokens to access @Snapchat private APIs (back in 2016)
  - liuliu 4y ago
    Exactly. This is a never ending mouse-and-cat game. 2016 is when jailbreak mods still somewhat functional.
mardifoufs 4y ago
Snapchat's userbase is more organic than most other social media platforms. I don't think I've ever seen a bot, and the "social circles" are much more private since it's less optimized towards meeting/finding new people. I'm sure there are still ways to profit from spamming or botting on snap but I can't really think of any. And not only is the social discovery potential pretty limited ( a part from celebrity accounts) but it's also only available on mobile apps (maybe the new snapcamera changed that but that's recent). Maybe it's just me but in general, I use snap in a way that's pretty different to any other social media. I don't use it a lot anymore though, and it's still hard to explain that "difference" honestly
- pphysch 4y ago
  I don't really use Snapchat right now, but I constantly get spammed with friend invites from random "women" that I assume are fake accounts. Of course, Snapchat doesn't let you refuse obvious spam requests via notification (but they do let you accept them), so you have to open the app to clear the spam. A clear dark pattern and I would take these usage metrics with a huge grain of salt.
tomlin 4y ago
Don't get the flowery speak for a platform that is objectively the world's largest distributor of cp.
- dvngnt_ 4y ago
  true, when i was a teen we used sms now they're probably on snap. not sure what the solution is
- WpgRubyDev 4y ago
  source on that? i don't want to search those terms
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    It's an ephemeral photo-based private messaging platform popular amongst teenagers. I have zero doubt that it's carrying a ton of underage illicit content, but most of it is probably being made and consumed by teenagers themselves. Still a legal nightmare for Snapchat.

olah_1 4y ago

Certainly there are many, many bots. BUT, I have personally noticed a resurgence in snapchat popularity. It did indeed die, but it came back after (I think) people have gotten burnt out on the super public nature of Instagram. Snapchat is more amenable to having a "persona". If you make an second account on Instagram, Instagram will literally start recommending it to the followers of your main account. So Snapchat just allows for a use case that Instagram simply does not. Instagram is the new Facebook. They are not friendly to being anonymous or pseudonymous.

ffggvv 4y ago

the growth is about in line with independent surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media...

thawaya3113 4y ago
Huh? That chart shows Snapchat usage declining, whereas they have been claiming steady growth. A lot of people on this thread are saying that people are doubting Snapchat’s numbers because they are old. And that’s definitely part of it. But, it’s also all the other metrics that don’t add up. The extremely low revenue per user, for example. Even lower than Twitter, for example, which has very high global penetration (therefore most of their users are from places with much lower costs of living than the US and therefore don’t generate as much as revenue), and has users spread across lower value platforms like the web, as opposed to Snapchat’s app only interface. On a personal level, I know someone whose business placed a bunch of ads in different social media (clothing primarily aimed at college aged women, but with a customer base that ranges from teens to late 20s) and had remarkably low engagement on Snapchat. And all of this is despite Apple signal boosting Snapchat for several events in a row now.

caleb-allen 4y ago

I would guess that you could uncover this information in Snapchat's 10K filings. In fact, I found the answer to your question on the 4th page of their annual filing to shareholders[1]: > While these metrics are determined based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our products are used across large populations globally. For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. We have not determined the number of such multiple accounts. It seems to me that Snap is quite open about their active user counts. [1] https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813 https://seekingalpha.com/filing/6183813

admiral33 4y ago
> For example, there may be individuals who have unauthorized or multiple Snapchat accounts, even though we forbid that in our Terms of Service and implement measures to detect and suppress that behavior. Weird. If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life. More time in app. I'd also expect there are fewer incentives for creating bots on snap versus other platforms. Its a messaging app, people only use it with people they know.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  Probably the quality of the content in the app goes down dramatically if you allow multiple accounts. But I can see a use case where people need to manage their business profile and their personal one, or a celebrity needing to have an unknown account for close people only. I am sure there are many more.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  > If a person is not a bot, you'd expect that when they are making an nth account they are attempting to apply another use case for the service in their life No. In my experience, it's because they lost access to the older account for whatever reason. Accounts are cheap and ephemeral and forgot password flows are horrible.

liuliu 4y ago

Snapchat has been more proactive on fighting bot than other competitors. You can easily copy the cookie from instagram.com and write a bot with puppeteer. You cannot just sniff the traffic from Snapchat app and hope to write a bot with that. It has been aggressive at binary obfuscation for request signing, and cracking down the 3rd party mods (such as the Snapchat Phantom mod).

password4321 4y ago
https://casper.io https://casper.io -> https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322 https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322 > iPhone farm to generate security tokens to access @Snapchat private APIs (back in 2016)
- liuliu 4y ago
  Exactly. This is a never ending mouse-and-cat game. 2016 is when jailbreak mods still somewhat functional.

mardifoufs 4y ago

Snapchat's userbase is more organic than most other social media platforms. I don't think I've ever seen a bot, and the "social circles" are much more private since it's less optimized towards meeting/finding new people. I'm sure there are still ways to profit from spamming or botting on snap but I can't really think of any. And not only is the social discovery potential pretty limited ( a part from celebrity accounts) but it's also only available on mobile apps (maybe the new snapcamera changed that but that's recent). Maybe it's just me but in general, I use snap in a way that's pretty different to any other social media. I don't use it a lot anymore though, and it's still hard to explain that "difference" honestly

pphysch 4y ago
I don't really use Snapchat right now, but I constantly get spammed with friend invites from random "women" that I assume are fake accounts. Of course, Snapchat doesn't let you refuse obvious spam requests via notification (but they do let you accept them), so you have to open the app to clear the spam. A clear dark pattern and I would take these usage metrics with a huge grain of salt.

tomlin 4y ago

Don't get the flowery speak for a platform that is objectively the world's largest distributor of cp.

dvngnt_ 4y ago
true, when i was a teen we used sms now they're probably on snap. not sure what the solution is
WpgRubyDev 4y ago
source on that? i don't want to search those terms
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  It's an ephemeral photo-based private messaging platform popular amongst teenagers. I have zero doubt that it's carrying a ton of underage illicit content, but most of it is probably being made and consumed by teenagers themselves. Still a legal nightmare for Snapchat.