Snapchat Ramps Up At 2019 Partner Summit

During Snap’s inaugural ‘Partner Summit’ last week in Los Angeles Chief Executive, Evan Spiegel, came out swinging for copycats Instagram and Facebook, alongside announcing a series of innovative new features.

Snapchat lacks the comprehensive reach of Facebook or YouTube, which both reach approx. 80% of web users in Australia and New Zealand.

However, as with most ‘niche’ networks, Snapchat (owned by Snap) does have high cut-through and engagement with certain audience segments. According to Spiegel;

‘In the United States, Snapchat now reaches nearly 75% of all 13 to 34-year-olds, and we reach 90% of 13 to 24-year-olds. In fact, we reach more 13 to 24-year-olds than Facebook or Instagram in the United States, the U.K., France, Canada and Australia.’

While Spiegel didn’t note NZ, the same is true. As per the Snapchat ad planner, it has 1.1 million Kiwi users 18 – 24, which is greater than Facebook and Instagram (According to Facebook Ads Manager).

Snapchat Drives 8.3% Of Mobile Web

Snapchat’s cut through with younger demos is well known, as is it’s stickiness, with users opening Snapchat 18 – 25 times daily.

Users spend around 30 – 35 mins in Snapchat daily, sending 34.1 messages.

All that Snap creating, watching and sending chews up a lot of data. Resultantly Snapchat consumes 8.3% of all mobile data worldwide, which is about 40% more than Instagram.

Snapchat suffered a tough 2018 as it worked to redesign its core product, coping flack from users and influencers alike. However, it appears the platform is ready to kick on in 2019.

While Snapchat has been iterating on its product, larger, clunkier, less innovative social players have been circling its feature set.

For heaven’s sake, even LinkedIn has Stories now??!?!?!

Although, to be fair, LinkedIn’s version, Student Voices, is perhaps the lamest product launch of the last millennia.

And that includes Google + and the Apple Watch.

Snapchat, ‘Stop Stealing Stories Already, You Can Have Them!’

In a smart move, Snap has partnered with a range of other web players, many of whom already in Facebook’s crosshairs, allowing them to integrate Snap features.

In essence, Snap, which defines itself as a camera company, has effectively spent the past 18 months creating a camera platform for other channels to use.

Snap’s new Story Kit allows partners to integrate Snapchat Stories, amongst other features directly, into their apps.

Apps like Tinder and Houseparty can now host Stories inside their own products, allowing users to share to these from the Snapchat camera with Stories Kit. These are both launching later in 2019.

Story Kit forms part of Snap Kit, which launched in 2018.

More than 200 apps have already integrated Snap Kit, allowing users to log in to other apps with Snapchat, bring their Bitmoji, view Our Stories content and share stickers back to Snapchat.

The upshot for Snapchat in all this, is it expands the reach of its platform at a time when its growth efforts have been hampered by Instagram and Facebook feature cloning.

As Game of Thrones tragics know, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. A sentiment not wasted in the cutthroat realm of silicon valley.