When one thinks of Snapchat they typically think of teens taking selfies. This is in fact very true. The youth plays a major role in being part of the 161 million daily active users. On average, there are 2.5 billion Snapchats sent per day which was last updated on February 2, 2017. In 2014, so this statistic is continuously growing from here, 77% if college students were using Snapchat to send pictures to their peers and document their daily lives.
The statistics above alone show the major influence and impact that Snapchat has on youth today. The majority of youth today feel the need to document everything around them. If there is a rainbow they will make that their story. If there is a protest going on in their town, they will make it their story as well. This now relate to Snapchat’s influence on the media and the news. Snapchat has a discover page that had multiple sponsors that have daily updates on various news sites such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. On the other hand, looking at more of the entertainment side of news, there is a discover page for People, Cosmopolitan, Vogue along with so much more. Each college campus also has a section where students can post about updates that occur on campus. Some are entertaining while others are more informational.
Looking at all these statics and amount of people that use Snapchat one would think it is making a lot of money. Well the answer is no, it is not. Snapchat is free first of all, along with many of the other social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. Unlike those, Snapchat losses a lot of money. One of the major reasons is because they need to constantly buy more storage because of all the pictures, videos and messages that are going through Snapchat by the second. It is in fact bringing in revenue by selling to advertisers so they are able to publicize their product and make different geotags but they are losing more money than they are making. Overall, the company is a potential risk factor.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38850229 (click to watch video)