Home Business Snapchat Mulls Funding At $3.5 Billion Valuation

Snapchat Mulls Funding At $3.5 Billion Valuation

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Snapchat is reportedly in talks for another funding that values the company at up to $3.6 billion, reports AllThingsD.

Snapchat Mulls Funding At $3.5 Billion Valuation

Citing known sources, Kara Swisher and Mike Isaac of AllThingsD report Snapchat could be funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the lead investor might be a strategy party from Asia.

Snapchat users send 350 million photos per day

Snapchat is a popular photo sharing mobile application that makes it easy to instantly share photos with friends. The appeal behind the apps is that each photo or video instantly disappears shortly after it’s shared.

The company witnessed tremendous growth thanks to its younger demographic. Only a few months back, Snapchat’s 23-year old CEO Evan Spiegel boasted of over 200 million snapped pictures and videos taken by its users on a daily basis. During September’s TechCrunch Disrupt Conference, Evan Spiegel disclosed the number has grown to 350 million self-destructing messages daily.

Facebook feeling the heat

With 350 million photos per day, Snapchat is now on par with Facebook in terms of photos shared per day.

Recently, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) acquired Instagram to stay on top of the explosion in digital photography and now it’s allowing iOS to send Instagram photos. With social communication becoming increasingly visual, it is felt further integration into the Facebook App or Facebook Home are likely and it shouldn’t be too long before the drop down menu in status updates has an Instagram option that pulls images directly to the app’s album.

The popularity of the Snapchat application has worried established social players. Snapchat’s Spiegel has continually rebuffed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s acquisition offers. Now Zuckerberg has cloned the application outright with a service called Poke, though it flopped while Snapchat continues to grow.

Tencent could be logical candidate

With news of Snapchat raising another round of funding doing rounds, J.J. Colao of Forbes feels the most logical candidate could be Tencent, the Chinese owner of messaging apps QQ and WeChat. In an earlier interview with Forbes, Evan Spiegel admired Tencent noting the Chinese owner is a huge role model for his company.

With Tencent is making the majority of its revenues through in-app purchases for things like virtual stickers and premium features, Snapchat’s CEO indicated his company would also look to make money from in-app purchases. Colao said a partnership between the two would allow Snapchat to potentially seek expansion outside North America.

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