Snapchat is poised to grow its user base by double digits this year, and will continue to do so through 2020, according to a new report by marketing research company eMarketer. For the first time this year, Snapchat will also best Twitter and Pinterest in terms of overall users, according to eMarketer, which defines a user as someone who logs into an account at least once a month on a consistent basis.
Snapchat will have 58.6 million users in 2016 — slightly more than Twitter’s 56.8 million and Pinterest’s 54.6 million users. By 2020, eMarketer estimates that Snapchat will have 85.5 million users. And that audience is becoming increasingly young. While most of the app’s current users are aged 18 to 24, the fastest growing group in the U.S. are those under 12 — a demographic expected to grow 42.9% this year, eMarketer says.
“In a world in which there is an app for nearly everything, Snapchat has cut through the clutter by injecting fun back into social sharing,” explained eMarketer principal analyst Cathy Boyle in a statement. “Snapchat has tapped into a key change in consumer behavior: The desire for intimate one-to-one or one-to-few communication as opposed to broadcast-style sharing across an entire network.”
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In terms of competing messaging apps, however, Snapchat still has a ways to go before it catches up to Facebook Messenger, which is the biggest messaging app in the U.S. Facebook Messenger is expected to have 105.2 million users in 2016, while WhatsApp, the third most popular messaging app, is expected to have 18.4 million, according to eMarketer.
Most recently, in order to fuel growth, Snapchat rolled out a redesign of its Discover section featuring a more magazine-like layout that also lets users subscribe to receive content from participating publishers.
