Facebook-owned Instagram last year rolled out a feature called Stories, modeled after Snapchat’s feature by the same name. Snapchat had about 100 million fewer downloads than Instagram in 2016, according to market research firm App Annie.
NEW GADGETS
Snap had 158 million daily active users in the fourth quarter, up just 3 percent from the previous quarter, compared to 14 percent growth during the same period in 2015, according to Snap’s IPO filing. New gadgets that offer more ways to interact with Snapchat could help attract new users and get existing users to spend more time on the app.
“Ultimately, that’s what advertisers are going to be looking at,” said Douglas Melsheimer, managing director at investment bank and consulting firm Bulger Partners. Snap, along with Facebook and host of online rivals ranging from Google to BuzzFeed, is capitalizing on the shift of video advertising dollars from traditional television to the internet.
Snap’s IPO filing reads “as if all the hard things in front of them that they have to do are already done,” said Rett Wallace, cofounder and chief executive at Triton Research. But, he said, that’s not the case. “How will they hold up against all the guys you don’t want to be fighting against in the world – Facebook, Google and Apple?”
