How Much Has Snapchat Really Grown in 4 Years? [Infographic]

Snapchat has a reputation for fast growth, and considering that it currently has 100 million daily active users, that’s certainly not a stretch. But how does it compare to the growth of other popular social platforms?

Launched in September 2011, Snapchat is now just under 4 years old. For the sake of comparison, we decided to take a look at how other major networks – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – were doing 4 years in.

Here’s what we found:

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Monthly active users

Snapchat: an estimated 200 million

Instagram: 180 million

Facebook: 140 million

Twitter: 30 million

Daily updates

Snapchat: 400 million snaps per day

Instagram: 70 million photos and videos per day

Twitter: 50 million tweets per day

Facebook: 13 million statuses per day

New users

Snapchat: no exact number released, but it grew 57% in 2014

Facebook: 600,000 new users per day

Twitter: 370,000 new users per day

Instagram: 130,000 new users per week (roughly 19,000 per day)

Revenue

Facebook: $272 million

Twitter: $45 million

Instagram: purchased for $1 billion 2 years in

Snapchat: $0

The takeaway

Judging by active users and daily growth, Snapchat’s 4-year growth is impressive. That being said, it’s also important to note that the app was released at a time when most Internet users were already familiar with social sharing.

When Facebook was released, however, social media was a relatively new concept (even Myspace was only a year old!), and getting people to put personal information online was certainly much more challenging. This makes the fact that their number of monthly active users was almost 75% of what Snapchat’s is today seem pretty impressive.

Then, of course, there’s the question of revenue. Facebook and Twitter were pulling strong numbers 4 years in, and although Facebook never released financial information about Instagram after acquiring the platform, $1 billion is a hefty amount for an app that was only 2 years old.

So where does that leave Snapchat? From the data above, it looks like they’re not in great shape – but that’s not quite the case. The app raised $650 million at a $16 billion valuation back in May, after turning down a $3 billion offer from Facebook back in December.

Investors clearly see potential in Snapchat – likely because of its huge popularity with the hard-to-reach 18-24 demographic – but at this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to how the company will decide to turn a profit with their wildly successful app.