Snapchat Video Views Are Gaining Up On Facebook

Snapchat’s video views are close to that of Facebook due to its triple growth in traffic.

Snapchat is about to take Facebook’s position as far as the progress in the video sharing industry is concerned. Since May, the number of videos watched on SnapChat daily has grown by 300% to 6 billion views, stated people close to the organization.

This matches with Facebook’s 8 billion views as it announced previous week, which has grown by 200% from 4 billion in April. Its number includes both mobile and desktop views, whereas the video sharing app’s viewers, although lesser in number, is only made up of smartphone users.

Facebook News affirmed that the video messaging app verified the 6 billion audience figure, but refused to share its views regarding it. Videos are rapidly turning into a very popular activity on social network applications, and the battle for views takes place at a time when experts are predicting a rapid growth in digital video advertising. Clips are known as a significant new revenue-earning source, as advertising charges tends to be greater for a video tape in comparison to text or static pictures.

During the previous week’s earnings event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated 500 million users view videos daily on Facebook’s platform and applications. He told experts on Wednesday, “Over the next few years, video is going to be some of the most engaging content online”. Previous month, the company initiated the testing process of a newly introduced page designed for its application’s video. Some 1.5 million small enterprises uploaded videos to the website in September.

Facebook aims to defeat Google’s YouTube, which exceeds one billion monthly active views that are able to generate “billions of views” daily. Facebook News today revealed that Snapchat stated it has greater than 100 million regular active viewers.

YouTube prefers to trace usage in hours, whereas the social media company counts videos as watched it is played for three seconds. Whereas, Snapchat is known for charging marketers for videos that are played for fractions of a second, as a large number of transient clips consume a shorter period than on the rest of the networks.

In October, it introduced a new advertising format “sponsored licenses”, letting promoters make an addition of digital “stickers” to audiences’ video messages to advertise their products. Mr. Zuckerberg stated previous week that the types of videos being viewed on digital networks differ largely from the long format content telecasted on TV, requiring producers to produce their output accordingly.

“The more interesting question is not in the near term what we’re going to do to develop ways to consume long-form content, but what traditional media and content producers who have traditionally produced long-form content are going to do to chunk their stuff up better, so that way it can be more easily consumed by this big community online”, Mark stated.

 

 

 

Snapchat Poaches Employees From Rivals Twitter And BuzzFeed

Snapchat has poached its rival executives to run its first European office.

Snapchat has hired its rival digital media organization’s former officials to meet the staffing needs of its bureau in London. The company is still searching for a European head. Business Insider has come to know that the recently made appointments include:

• Jonathan Davies, who served as Buzzfeed’s ex-director of brand partnerships for Europe
• Camilla Schilbach, who has not only headed the AOL Advertising U.K. group but has also worked as the Game Analytics Business Development Director
• Tariq Slim, who has headed the Twitter’s tech and telco for Britain
• Twitter U.K.’s sales and ad team’s ex-member Adrian King

Chief Strategy Officer, Imran Khan, is heading the expansion in the European region and holding talks with potential applicants for the past few months. It is probable that the company would also poach employees of a number of other famous digital media enterprises. Snapchat news exclaimed that it has refused to share its views regarding the development.

People aware of the issue told Business Insider that Snapchat spoke to senior British media and advertising officials about filling the highest European slot since the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, which was held in Southern France in June. Instead of reporting in the British territory, the new recruits would perform their jobs and report to the company’s officials in New York. The objective is to formally inaugurate the U.K. sales operation for the enterprise in November and the expectation is that a European head would be hired in an imminent manner.

Snapchat news today reported that the company’s sales team had previously met European advertising officials to launch the application’s advertising offerings before the opening of the office in London. UK is organization’s second largest market but it is only now that the organization would establish an official office here, one year after the video messaging giant introduced its first advertisement campaign on the application.

It still needs to establish its own outpost in the United Kingdom. According to documents registered with the Companies House, “Snapchat Limited” first established as a private limited company in the British region in September, listed in a bureau at 90 Fetter Lane, London.

According to Snapchat Breaking News, Business Insider comprehends that the office’s address was registered for bookkeeping purposes only. The Financial Times reported that the audiovisual app development organization is about to earn sales revenue worth $100 million on a yearly basis.

It could be assumed that Snapchat’s hiring policy would threaten its rivals.

 

Snapchat Used Politically As An Advertising Tool

Snapchat is being used to achieve a political objective through advertising campaign.

Snapchat’s network is being utilized to achieve a political objective. Snapchat news exclaimed that the North American advocacy group, named Secure America Now, is launching out a new advertisement through the networking organization’s platform. The platform has been designed as a tool to target Senator Ben Cardin and his perspective regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

The commercial, which is being introduced in Cardin’s home state of Maryland, comes in the shape of a filter that company’s networking users can impose over their uploaded pictures. It is known for featuring a handful of illustrated microphones and requests voters to tell Cardin that he should say no to the agreement.

Snapchat news today disclosed that the Western group has previously taken a similar initiative and launched a political filter advertisement before the Republican primary debate, which took place earlier this year. It is the first time that the social platform operating organization has been deployed to act against an individual political personality.

Snapchat breaking news affirmed that Cardin is considered as a key voter on the Iran deal. He has not taken the decision and stated that he will announce his decision after the Labor Day. Senior account executive at Harris Media, Josh Canter, has stated, “We believe this will be effective because it is reaching young voters that aren’t normally reached.”

Mr. Cardin has proved to be an important target of lobbies from both sides of the agreement. Political sources indicated that he has not been very satisfied with the deal and the side agreements that were signed between the Middle Eastern country and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has so far refused to take a position.

Republicans are interested in the deal’s cancellation. After desertions of Senators Bob Menendez and Charles Schumer in recent times, GOP legislators would need to be helped by at least four more Democrats to solve a problem, assuming that Republicans have joined. They would require another half a dozen Democratic legislators to overrule a veto from the White House.

Official sources highlighted that everyone in Maryland would access the recent modern promotional tool. The organization’s political initiative would help it appease the Republicans and their fans, who could contribute to its growth in the future. Snapchat’s officials should now advertise the political message to satisfy the demands of the Anti-Iranian lobby.

Snapchat is used as an advertising tool to oppose Iran deal for the first time. The company is positive in its latest approach to interact with the users via this method.

 

 

 

QR Codes Being Made Cool Again By Snapchat

 

Snapchat has introduced Snapcodes which will let the users follow other by pointing their Snapchat camera on the QR code of that user.

For years, QR codes have been the source of laughing stock. The bar codes had been embarked on many magazines and posters and were also signaled as the way which is easier to connect to bonus content or URLs. However they had become a symbol of frustration and over-engineering.

The QR codes became a joke as they would not scan efficiently and for that matter, it was said that only Snapchat can make them cool. It has become funnier now that Snapchat has actually worked on it and made that statement fall into the category of truth.

Latest Snapchat news is that the company has launched Snapcodes which are also known as Snaptags. Every Snapchatter has now their own QR code which is Snapchat branded displayed on the profile which can be accessed by pressing the icon which is more like a yellow ghost atop the camera. One user can automatically follow another person by focusing their app’s camera on the Snapcode of that user.

The company has reported that there are millions of Snapcodes that are being scanned per week. Snapchat news reports that in order to make life easier for the celebrities on the Snapchat, stars and also the everyday users, the app has now allowed the users to download the vector versions of the users’ Snapcodes that the users can put on the big screens, posters and even on websites.

The app does not have a way through which users can discover the people they would follow; however, the Snapcodes that are downloadable could help interconnect the huge number of users. The more people are able to follow large number of other users, the more content there is more content that is accessible to them and there are high chances that people will use it for long and there would be more opportunities for the startup to make money.

Not to forget that QR codes being cool is the forte of Snapchat only. Since the time it has been launched, people have begun screenshotting them and using them as a display picture on twitter and even blogging them or posting them on the social networks to promote Snapchat to the other community of friends and also encourage them to begun using it. The vector versions of the Snapcode can enlarge to any size and will not lose its quality which is another great factor by the company.

Snapcodes can be seen as the follow button for the app. Since the app did not have any website or links, it had to have a solution to the Facebook or Twitter’s follow button.

 

Snapchat Has Replaced “Best Friends” With Friend Emojis

Snapchat has got rid of Best Friends list and rather introduced Friends Emojis.

 Ever been annoyed by seeing the people you snap the most with under the list of “Best Friends”? Well we are talking about Snapchat here. This feature has been coming out as a weird one and it looks like the company has taken care of it. Latest Snapchat news reports that the app has decided to remove the list and introduce Friend Emojis instead. This will let you have a private view of showing the people who are close to you on Snapchat based on the number of snaps and the often interaction.

Following is the list of Friend Emojis that Snapchat has incorporated and also meaning as to which emoticon means what.

1.     Gold Heart – That is “You are number one Best Friends” emoticon. The person to whom you send the most number of snaps is also sending you the most number of snaps.
2.     Grimace – This is “You have mutual number one Best Friend” emoticon. The person to whom you send the most snaps is also the one to whom this person sends snaps the most.
3.     Smile- This one is “One of your Best Friends” emoticon. This is one of the people to whom you send most of the snaps.
4.      Sunglasses – This is “You have a mutual Best Friend” emoticon. One of the people to whom you send most of the apps is also one of those to whom this person sends snaps the most.
5.     Smirk – This means “You are Best Friends with them but they are not” emoticon. You are among one of the people they send their snaps to the most but you don’t.
6.     Fire- You and this person are on Snapstreak- You are on fire with sending snaps to this person and this person to you, consecutively for a few days now.

Furthermore, Snapchat news reports that it wishes to keep reminding you of people to whom you haven’t send the snaps in a while. Under the section of “Recents” where the list of most snaps sent to resides, there is a section of “Needs Love” which consists of people that were the recent ones once and now you are out of snaps with them.

The emojis and “needs love” features transformed the snapchat into kind of a game. The game where people can become a part of Snapstreak with back and forth snaps being sent consecutively or becoming a best friend of someone.

There might be the case that you find these new features a bit confusing but the company is hoping that people will help each other in order to understand them better.

 

 

 

Alibaba Group Obsession with Snapchat – A Better Understanding

 

Alibaba has invested a major amount in Snapchat. The noticeable factor is why? It might be due to WeChat being its arch-rival’s application.

Some investments don’t mean the question of “how much?” to be raised but needs to be answered in terms of “from whom?” Such is the investment that had been made by Alibaba in Snapchat. According the latest Alibaba news, the company has invested $200 million in Snapchat which is a part of $500 million funding.

The point here that has to be noticed is the reason why Alibaba is trying to invest in the photo app so much. Alibaba is an e-commerce giant in China and reportedly almost 80% of the people in the country buy goods from this store. Also, the company held the biggest IPO in U.S last year. However, Snapchat is a fleeting messaging app. What value can Alibaba Group Holding provide to Snapchat?

The most notable point among the lost list of speculation will be the fact that the e-commerce giant has missed the messaging app race back in China. Interestingly this is the only and the biggest failure that the company has gone through in terms of business. With so much money to burn, the company had decided to invest a small amount on this photo messaging app. It should be kept in mind that the e-commerce giant invested $215 million last year in Tango.

Also, Alibaba’s interest in messaging apps is connecting to the company’s rival Tencent and it owning WeChat. This app is utterly popular in the company’s native country and is used by numerous amounts of people.

Be it chatting with a friend or group of friends, the answer is WeChat. Also if you wish to post pictures of your recent trip and share it with your friends and don’t want to go through tiresome customization on Facebook then again, WeChat is the forum for you. Even if you want to transfer money or enhance your business contacts, the app comes into play. All in all, what is it that this app doesn’t offer? Therefore, it is a tough competition for Alibaba.

On the other hand, Snapchat is emerging as a prominent player and with time it has become the perfect startup across the globe. It is reported that the messaging app has over 100 million users, majority being in United States.

As per the Alibaba news, Snapchat is blocked in China and WeChat has already made its market there so the major reason of this investment and collaboration must be e-commerce.  The Discover factor in Snapchat has turned it into a platform for media purposes.

Snapchat had already been partnered with Tencent too which is an arch rival to Alibaba, that might be a little crucial but lets see what this major investment does to the business and market.