If you’re looking for evidence that microblogging venue Twitter Inc (TWTR) simply isn’t what … well, what much of anyone is looking for, here’s another layer of proof — a much younger rival has now surpassed Twitter in terms of active monthly users.
The specifics: The uber-short-lived messaging and photo-sharing platform Snapchat now boasts 150 million daily users. Twitter, conversely, only draws an estimated crowd of about 140 million users per day.
What’s odd about the numbers is that Twitter launched in 2006, and based on the last couple of quarters’ data, user growth has essentially stalled. Snapchat, on the other hand, only went live in 2011, and has not only surpassed Twitter in terms of active users, but is still growing.
Yes, it’s something that should bug owners of TWTR stock.
Snapchat Surpasses TWTR
Take all the user numbers with a grain of salt, because they’re just estimates from third parties. On the flipside, those “people familiar with the matter” and analyst guesses are usually in the proverbial ballpark. If the Twitter numbers and Snapchat numbers are anywhere close to being on target, it’s yet another reason for TWTR stock owners to fear the worst.
For those not familiar with it, Snapchat is an instant messaging service that facilitates text messages, but is mostly geared to send photographs — snapshots — to friends and followers. Unlike most other messaging platforms though, messages, pictures and videos delivered using Snapchat disappear forever within a matter of seconds.
Snapchat generates revenue by sending advertisements to users.
From a distance, to the layperson, it looks enough like Twitter to not understand how one can still be growing and other one can’t. To the average 14-year-old Twitter and Snapchat aficionado though, the differences are indeed stark.
One of the biggest is simply that Snapchat messages are delivered to a user’s friends or followers (provided the app is turned on). With Twitter, a user’s followers have to search for a particular post … something they may or may not be willing to consistently do.
The other key difference: Snapchat was built from the ground up to share pictures and videos. It is possible to send photos with Twitter, but it’s still a clunky process.
That being said, perhaps the most appealing aspect of Snapchat is that the posts are soon automatically deleted.
Once Again, Twitter Misses the Mark
To those who truly understand how consumers think and act, the fact that Snapchat has caught Twitter in half the time Twitter’s been around comes as no real surprise. See, Snapchat knows what Facebook Inc (FB) also knows, and what Twitter doesn’t know. That is, most users access social networking platforms as a means to satisfy their vanity needs.
This isn’t hard to see with Facebook. User photos are prominently displayed and easily accessible, with most photos being of that user or that user’s interests. The Facebook platform is also a de facto publishing platform that allows users to become a journalist as much or as little as desired. And, perhaps more than anything else, Facebook is designed to ensure a user’s friends and followers all see that user’s “look at me” moment.
Snaphat takes the same premise and not only simplifies it, but puts it on steroids … a “look at my picture right now or never” mindset drives everything the platform does.
That’s not to say Twitter can’t do those things in its own way. It’s not seamless in that regard though. Twitter was initially built as a means of combining blogs, e-mail and SMS messages, and in an effort to do all three, it didn’t do any of them very well. It has tried to tweak things in the meantime, but it has yet to shake off its sterile feel, and it has yet to really appeal to consumers’ narcissistic tendencies.
And that’s why its user growth has been anemic for months now.
Bottom Line for TWTR Stock
As easy (and perhaps as pointless) as it is to kick TWTR stock while it’s down, there are some lingering optimists out there who think Twitter can make a go of it, and to its credit, the company’s got plenty of cash to remain afloat while it tries to find the right recipe for success using the ingredients it has got.
It has been long enough, however. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. There’s a reason nearly every other social media platform continues to grow.
Today’s news counts as another reason not to own TWTR stock.
As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
