Snapchat Competitors
- YouTube
- Linked In
- Kakao
- Line
- TikTok
- Tencent
Snapchat offers several attractive features for image and video sharing and instant messaging. Snapchatters can also shop from premium brands like Dior and Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs from Snapchat.
Snapchat is an instant messaging app and a popular social media platform.
It has established itself as a distinct social media brand that offers instant messaging, and image and video sharing features.
Over the last few years, the company has experienced solid growth in its user base and popularity.
Snapchat is owned by Snap Inc, which defines itself as a camera company.
According to its website, there are more than 306 million daily active users that use Snapchat daily.
Snapchat offers unique features supported by Augmented Reality.
The self deleting messages, which can be shared through the app are called snaps.
Released in 2011, snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggy Brown.
Users around the globe use snapchat for messaging, image sharing and video sharing.
Apart from that, Snapchat’s popularity among the advertisers has also grown driven by the growth in its user base and focus on innovation.
A List of Snapchat Competitors:
In this post, we will discuss the leading competitors of Snapchat.
Snap operates in a highly competitive business environment where it is competing against leading and strong players in the internet technology industry, which have significant financial and other resources.
The social media industry is currently ruled by leading players like Facebook and Google, which use their dominant position in the global market to grow their user base and industry influence.
Let’s take a look at how Snapchat is positioned against these players and what factors are helping it survive the competition.
Facebook:
Facebook is called the king of social media.
The leading social media channel has a user base.
In the recent years, the social media network has experienced a solid growth in its user base and popularity driven by its focus on innovation and user experience.
In 2020, its number of monthly active users grew to 2.8 billion, which was 12% higher than the previous year.
The social media giant also experienced a growth of 225 in its annual net revenue compared to the previous year.
Its annual net revenues grew to $86 billion in 2020.
Facebook generates most of its revenues from advertising.
Apart from its core business, Facebook also owns Instagram, messenger, Whatsapp and Oculus.
While Facebook, and Instagram are leading competitors of snapchat in the social media category, whatsapp is a leading competitor in the instant messaging category.
Instagram is also a leading competitor of Snapchat in the image sharing category.
YouTube:
YouTube has experienced solid growth in its user base over recent years.
It is mainly a video sharing platform that is used by individual users, businesses and advertisers.
Due to its highly engaging features, YouTube is also a favorite of social media marketers.
YouTube is owned by Google and compared to Snapchat, it is an enormous social media website.
In 2021, YouTube has an estimated user base of around 2.24 billion users from across the globe.
YouTube has also become an important source of advertising revenue for its parent company Alphabet
In 2020, the social media channel generated around $19.8 billion in ad revenue compared to $15.15 billion in the previous year.
YouTube’s global popularity is based on Google’s intense focus on innovation, user engagement and increased social media use worldwide.
It is an important marketing channel for social media advertisers.
Among the most watched channels on youTube is Lego.
While YouTube differs a lot from Snapchat, the business models of the two and several features are similar.
Users use Snapchat worldwide for image and video sharing apart from instant messaging.
YouTube is among the most significant and influential competitors of Snapchat.
Twitter:
Twitter is also one of the leading and most popular social media networks in the world.
It is also one of the favorite channels of social media advertisers.
In the last quarter of 2020, the number of Daily Active users of twitter was 192 million, of which 37 million were from the United states, which is among the most significant markets for Twitter and 155 million International users.
Twitter also depends mainly on advertising for revenues.
The company places heavy focus on innovation and increased its research and development expenses sharply in 2020 compared to 2019.
Advertisers can promote their tweets on Twitter to gain attention and attract followers.
Apart from it people and businesses can also promote their accounts on twitter to attract followers and customers.
There are several things common between Twitter and snapchat.
Both depend on advertising for income.
Apart from it, promoted or premium accounts are also a part of Snapchat’s platform.
Twitter and snapchat compete for users and advertising dollars.
Linked In:
Linked In is also one of the leading social media platforms.
It mainly engages professionals from around the world.
Businesses and advertisers also use this platform for promoting their businesses, hiring and promoting their organizational culture and work environment.
The user base of Linked In also includes millions of companies.
It offers several attractive features that are similar to Facebook and Twitter.
One key benefit of Linked In for social media advertisers is that they can target a huge base of college students on this platform with ease.
Linked In is owned by Microsoft and is considerably larger than Snapchat in terms of financial resources and technical capabilities, apart from user base.
However, the two compete for attracting users and advertising dollars.
In 2021, Linked In has around 740 million active users from 200 countries around the world.
Around 40% of its active users access the platform on a daily basis, which means that the platform clocks more than a billion monthly interactions.
Another important thing about Linked In, which makes it a favorite destination of the social media advertisers is that it has a large base of affluent users or those who make more than $75K per annum.
Such users constitute at least 44% of the social media network’s user base.
The United States is the largest market of Linked In with around 176 million active monthly users.
Pinterest:
Pinterest has also acquired a significant position among the social media platforms.
It is mainly an image sharing platform where users can save images from different websites.
These images are called pins.
As the user base of Pinterest has grown, the interest of advertisers in this platform has also increased.
Apart from allowing users to save pins, Pinterest also offers features that advertisers and businesses can use for marketing and promotions.
Pinterest’s popularity has surged faster in recent years.
Over the last two years, the brand has experienced solid growth in its user base and net revenue.
The net revenues of Pinterest increased to $1.7 billion in 2020, which was 48% higher than the previous year.
Its number of monthly active users at the end of 2020 was 459 million and in the third quarter of 2021 it reached 444 million.
Pinterest competes with Snapchat in terms of users and advertising dollars.
Kakao:
Another significant competitor of Snapchat is Kakao.
Kakao is a South Korean internet company with a strong user base.
It was established in 2010 and acquired Path and American social media company in 2015, which had found success in Indonesia.
Kakao has made more acquisitions in its history to grow its user base and net revenues.
Kakao also offers Kakao Talk, which is a free instant messaging app that smartphone users can use for messaging and calling like Whatsapp.
Kakao also offers a special image and video sharing service, which is called Kakao Story.
However, the company offers a vast range of services including transportation services, online music, internet banking and ewallet.
Kakao competes with Snapchat for users and advertising revenues.
Line:
Another international competitor of snapchat that offers similar services is Line.
Line is based in Japan and was launched in 2011.
It has experienced significant growth in its popularity in various Asian markets including Japan, Taiwan and Thailand.
Line is a freeware app that users can download on various applications including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs.
It can be used for Instant messaging, sarong audio and video files, video calling and conference calling.
Line’s popularity has grown very fast which can be understood from the fact that by 2015, its user base had grown to 600 million according to Wikipedia.
Like Kakao, Line also offers a diverse range of services including Line Pay (digital wallet, online streaming and transportation services.
Line is among the leading competitors of Snapchat in the Asian market and the two compete for users and advertising dollars.
Naver Corporation and Z Holdings own Line together.
TikTok:
TikTok has also experienced a significant growth in its popularity in the international market.
It ranks among the biggest social networks worldwide.
In various parts of the world, TikTok enjoys a very high level of popularity.
It is mainly a video sharing app that has faced the ire of several governments related to data security and user privacy.
While it is still banned in India and Pakistan, ex-president of the United States Donald Trump had pledged to completely ban the social network in the United States market.
The Biden government has eased the restrictions imposed by the previous government on TikTok.
However, Tiktok still continues to face several types of difficulties and challenges in the international market.
In China, the app is known as Douyin.
The social media app is owned by internet technology company Byte Dance, which is headquartered in Beijing, China.
However, the Chinese government is taking a hardline approach towards technology companies operating from China, which is making the situation difficult for businesses like Byte Dance, AliBaba and Tencent.
Apart from TikTok, Byte Dance also owns Douyin, Lark, Toutiao and Xigua Video.
The user base of TikTok has exploded over the past three years.
In 2021, its user base has grown to 1 billion monthly active users compared to 271 million at the end of 2018.
With its large user base, TikTok has become an attractive platform for social media advertisers and influencers.
TikTok and Snapchat compete for users and advertising dollars.
Tencent:
Tencent is a leading internet technology company based in China.
It also offers a vast range of services including communication, online gaming, social media, fintech, online advertising, and other cloud based services.
Tencent offers QQ, Weixin and Wechat.
QQ is an instant messaging platform that targets the millennials and GenZ.
Weixin has evolved from an instant messaging app to become a digital service provider that meets the digital needs of more than 1.2 billion monthly active users.
It is an integration of instant messaging and social entertainment.
Tenecent has focused on making QQ a highly engaging platform for the young generation.
QQ’s video and image feed services are called Mini World.
Tencent has added several new features to Mini World to make it more engaging for Gen Z.
Gen Z and millennial users use weixin moments and chat to upload and share videos.
By the end of 2020, the combined monthly active users of Weixin and Wechat had grown to 1.225 billion.
On the other hand, the number of smart device monthly active users of QQ had grown to 594 million.
Tencent is among the leading competitors of Snapchat that offers similar services and competes with Snap for users and advertising dollars.