The war between social media platforms is not only about who is winning or losing, but it's about who gets the most attention. The more a service appeal to the public, the more active users it will have. Twitter and Snapchat are two competitors that somehow compete in the same league, and Snapchat is showing itself to be more popular.
Twitter was one of the biggest and most successful social media that comes second to only after Facebook. But since the competition became fierce, its position was quickly surpassed by Facebook's other apps, including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. And now Snapchat
Competing with Snapchat that is growing quickly with its service that's popular among young people, is not what Twitter had in mind, especially when it's having a hard time. Snapchat is having more than 150 million users using its service each day whereas Twitter that doesn't really disclose the number of its daily active users has less than 140 million according to an average of analysts' estimates.
The prediction started in the third quarter 2015, when Twitter said that about 44 percent of its more than 310 million users are active each day in the service's top 20 markets.
Twitter Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto at the time, said that the percentage had been stable. He also mentioned that "we'll be sure to disclose" if there was a significant change. But since the company hasn't given any updates regarding this, and given to its slow but steady performance, it could be implied that Twitter's active users count to about 136 million daily actives.
Twitter is having a hard time to maintain engagement and active user base. This moment of truth isn't experienced by Snapchat. The service has a higher engagement rate thanks to its way to put communication a bit more 'fun', as founder and Snapchat CEO Even Spiegel described:
Communication As A Fun Factor
As social beings, humans like to communicate. We interact with almost everything, and with that we want result. People are curious; they want attention; they want to be seen. They just want to be there. Social media networks are one of the ways that enable people to use tech as a way to ease communication. But still, the way of providing the means of communication is somehow strict.
Snapchat somehow made it different. The company put a bit of "fun" ingredient to remind people that communication should be indeed that way.
For example: Snapchat has made communication more interesting by making it more of a game by letting users send annotated selfies and short videos. It also has allowed people to use its imaging software capability so they can swap faces in a taken photo (The feature was proven popular that Facebook acquired Masquerade which offers similar photo-manipulation). What's more, Snapchat encourages users to visit its app frequently with features like "Snapstreak" which counts the number of consecutive days users have been communicating with their friends.
And with other features such as News, Live Stories and also private chats, Snapchat has an array of advantages over some others in the competition. And that advantage also includes against Twitter. And even more, Snapchat is also seen as a more modern platform if compared to Twitter.
On the other side of the ring, Twitter is a powerful competitor on its own and its influence is difficult to be matched. With power over celebrities and political figures, Twitter is in a market where it can pronounce itself as unique. For example, it has a character it's famous for: the 140-character limit. But since its launch, Twitter hasn't change that much. When everyone in the industry is embracing the change of trends, Twitter is somehow stuck in the year 2006 when it was first founded.
Twitter was inside the center of the internet social sphere, but things change.
Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged that Twitter at times can be confusing and alienating. This is something he and the company is trying to fix. One of the recent strategy was Twitter's four biggest shifts in how it sees 140-characters. Snapchat on the other hand, doesn't have such problem.