Snapchat, the popular image messaging and multimedia mobile app known for its ability to send videos and pictures that will be deleted permanently after viewing for a short period of time, is on track to have more active users in the US than either Twitter or Pintrest by the end of this year. This is according to market tracker website, eMarketer’s latest forecast on mobile messaging apps. The image messaging app which gets a huge amount of 10 Billion video views a day and recently raised $1.8 Billion in funding, is also expected to have it’s US user base to jump by 27.2% which will bring its number of US users to 58.6 Million. According to the eMarketer report, Snapchat’s US user base will also surge through 2020 which will bring a further 26.9 Million users to the app which will be twice more than what Twitter and Pintrest will have. Twitter and Pintrest on the other hand will have 56.8 Million and 54.6 Millions users respectively by the end of 2016.
While Snapchat is undergoing an explosive growth and will soon have more users than Twitter and Pintrest, Facebook’s own chat app, Messenger is still at the top of the chart in terms of number of US users. The Messenger app will have twice as many users than Snapchat in the US this year which is 105.2 Million users. The eMarketer report also stated that at least two-thirds of the US population will use the Messenger app at least once a month in this year and that the gap between Messenger and Snapchat will continue to broaden in the next four years. Facebook Messenger will have 46.6 Million more users than Snapchat this year but by the year 2018, that number will increase to 53.7 Million users.
An interesting fact stated in the report is the growth of usage among ages. According to it, the fastest growing user age in the US this year for Snapchat is children below 12 and it is expected to grow a further 42.9% this year. However, the age group with the most number of users is people aged between 18-24, consisting of 34.0% of Snapchat’s US user base. That is followed by Americans aged between 25 and 34, which will represent 27.0% of Snapchat’s US user base this year.