It looks like Snapchat is currently right in their peak growth period. It was just in April when Snapchat announced 150 million photos were shared through their app each day from 5 million daily active users, up from 60 million per day in February.
Then earlier in June, a major update to the app has been released. It aimed to improve the discovery of new friends and better manage your existing contacts. The update was fairly well received by users, with the most common feedback about the ever-so-slight logo change.
Snapchat has now announced via their blog that their service is sending 200 million photos per day, and has raised a fresh $60 million, giving Snapchat a valuation of around $800 million.
The “Snapkidz”
As another marketing variation, Snapchat has also released a ‘SnapKidz’ version of their app for users under the age of 13. There has always been a lot of speculation (and truth) the app is misused for sexting, and this feature is no doubt designed to protect a younger audience.
The Snapkidz feature as described on the Snapchat’s blog: “In the new iOS version, kids under the age of 13 are able to fill out the registration form, however their user information is not sent to us and an account is not created. Instead they are able to use “SnapKidz” a version of Snapchat that includes “an interface for taking snaps, captioning, drawing, and saving them locally on the device”, but does not support “sending or receiving snaps or adding friends”.