Twitter has been overtaken by Snapchat for the first time in terms of installed apps on Android devices in the U.S. As more and more people spend time in Snapchat’s app, analysts see it becoming a rising risk to other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Snapchat a threat to Twitter and Facebook
According to new data from digital intelligence firm SimilarWeb, Snapchat was installed on 22.7% of U.S. Android devices as of the end of April, whereas Twitter was installed on 21.8% of the devices. Snapchat has more than 100 million daily active users worldwide, and every day, those users view more than 10 billion videos. Over 60% of its daily active users create content every day, the company revealed recently.
In an April 28 report, Argus analyst Jim Kelleher said, “We are concerned that Twitter may be ceding potential and active users to sites such as Snapchat, which, with its photo- and video-based core model, may be better aligned with the use of smartphones in the ‘selfie’ era.”
SimilarWeb told CNBC that Facebook’s apps were the most popular social media apps and were installed at the following levels: Facebook’s flagship app, 68.4%; Instagram, 41.8%; Messenger, 59.4%; and WhatsApp, 20.9%. The LinkedIn app was found on 5.9% of U.S. Android devices.
The data collected by SimilarWeb is from a global panel of more than 250 million desktop and mobile devices, tens of thousands of websites, individual companies, and internet service providers. Its clients include eBay, Google, L’Oreal and United Airlines.
Snapchat better on one more count
Also Snapchat is ahead of Twitter when it comes to time spent on the app. Daily, users spent an average of 20 minutes and 20 seconds on the Snapchat app, while for the micro-blogging platform, it is just 12 minutes and 21 seconds. In comparison, users spent 46 minutes and 20 seconds on Facebook. On Instagram, users spent 20 minutes and 29 seconds per day, and on WhatsApp, users spent 29 minutes and 24 seconds.
According to a February report by SimilarWeb in which it revealed the results of its survey of 4 million global Android users, both Twitter and Snapchat have above-average retention rates once they are downloaded. Both apps have an almost 50% usage rate after three days, whereas within the same time period, a typical app sees average usage fall to 23%. Three days after installation, both Facebook and WhatsApp have an average usage rate of 80% and 79%.
According to IDC, in 2015, mobile device users installed almost 156 billion apps worldwide across all platforms, and that number is expected to increase to more than 210 billion in 2020.
