On Wednesday, Facebook announced that Messenger had passed 1 billion monthly active users. 

This chart from Statista shows how utterly Facebook dominates online communications. It now has the three top communications platforms — the core Facebook app, WhatsApp, and Messenger — all of which have more than a billion monthly users, plus Instagram, which comes in at 500 million. The only other company in the running is China's Tencent, with WeChat and Qzone. 

Not shown on this chart: Microsoft's Skype, which also comes in around 300 million, and LINE, the biggest tech IPO of 2016 so far, which is around 215 million, according to Statista.

SEE ALSO: It looks like Microsoft is on track to meet one of its big goals

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"Pokémon Go" is the gaming phenomenon that has seen thousands of people gathering in parks at night in search of rare pokémon. 

The game hasn't just been downloaded millions of times — it's also proving to retain users and keep them playing (although Business Insider's Rob Price recently explained why he's stopped playing the game.)

Analytics company 7Park Data says that users spent an average of 75 minutes in the app during its first week of release. That's an impressively high number, and shows that users keep coming back to play "Pokémon Go."

Another interesting finding from 7Park Data is that the launch of "Pokémon Go" may have caused people to use other apps like Facebook and YouTube less. The analytics firm found that average time spent inside those apps dropped after "Pokémon Go" launched. And the total US time spent inside apps increased by 4.1%, according to the company.

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Millennials are spending more time than ever watching short-form video content on their mobile devices, and players like Facebook and Snapchat are reaping the benefits.

These platforms — which capture billions of video views each day — are competing to capture growing mobile audiences and challenge the historical dominance of YouTube. The ensuing bout will create a new set of opportunities for content creators looking to cash in on the mobile video craze.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has developed a slide deck discussing how Facebook and Snapchat are shaking up mobile video.

Today, it can be yours for free. As an added bonus, you will gain immediate access to the team’s exclusive FREE newsletter, BI Intelligence Daily.

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Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak thinks that concerns about Snapchat's threat to Facebook are overblown.

"We don't believe Snapchat is having a material impact on FB's engagement or daily active user (DAU) growth," he wrote in a note to investors on Monday.

Nowak said he's seen a fear of Snapchat eating away at the attention of Facebook's younger audience reflected both in conversations and in the company's stock price.

Andrew Left at Citron Research, for example, has categorized Snapchat as a major threat to Facebook's growth.

But Nowak's analysis points to Facebook actually seeing strong daily active user growth this quarter for 18- to 24-year-olds, the demographic most likely to be pulled away by Snapchat's disappearing messages and new cartoon avatars.

He also believes that the ratio of its daily active to monthly active users — which is the best regular measure Facebook gives on how engaged its audience is — will continue to rise and even hit its largest increase since Q1 2015.

"This higher engagement leads to more ad impressions and higher overall monetization as we lift our ad revenue estimates by ~1% in 2016 and ~2% in 2017," Nowak wrote.

Although Nowak admits that he's seen mixed data about how much time users are spending on Snapchat versus Facebook, the projected increase in engagement has him pegging Facebook's Q2 profits between 2 and 8% higher than the rest of Wall Street.

Here's Morgan Stanley's estimate for Facebook's rising DAUs:

And here's how it sees its rising DAU to MAU ratio:

Facebook reports its Q2 earnings on Wednesday.

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg taught his digital butler a surprisingly complicated way to make his toast

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Pinterest just poached a top Snapchat ad executive who had been with the company for less than five months. 

In March, Snapchat hired Johnson as its head of quantitative ads, a move the Wall Street Journal cited at the time as a way to help the app establish its legitimacy "as a powerful vehicle for brand advertising."

He'll now be head of measurement science and insights at Pinterest and will report to Jon Kaplan, the head of global sales the company hired in February. 

Johnson previously worked for Kaplan when they were both at Google, where he spent more than three years before Snapchat, primarily as advertising research director. 

"The main reasons I made the move to Pinterest are for the people, the role, and the company," Johnson tells Business Insider via email.

He says that he has "tremendous respect" for Kaplan and that the job at Pinterest is "better aligned" with his "personal view of the future of advertising research" than his Snapchat gig, "as it brings together insights, measurement, and data science within sales as well as the product and engineering functions."

He also describes Pinterest as having "an incredible culture that's a great fit for me." 

Snapchat wasn't immediately available for comment.

Johnson isn't the first industry veteran whose stint at the messaging app has been short-lived. In 2015, it lost eight upper-level execs, with only one of them lasting more than eight months. The company's culture has previously been described as secretive and very top-down from CEO Evan Spiegel. 

SEE ALSO: Inside the cavernous warehouse where a bunch of ex-Googlers are building self-driving trucks

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Wall Street is fretting over Twitter's weak revenue forecast, pushing the stock down 12% on Wednesday. 

But according to Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter, Twitter faces a bigger problem than the shortfall in advertising revenue.

Twitter "must improve its core audience engagement issues before its creators begin to leave the platform," Schachter wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. 

Twitter has struggled to grow the size of its audience, which has been stagnant at around 300 million for more than a year. Meanwhile, younger rivals such as Snapchat and Facebook-owned Instagram are becoming increasingly popular among younger users. 

The worry is that the "creators," that is the celebrities, journalists, and video-makers who regularly post stuff on Twitter, might decide that Twitter isn't the hotspot it once was, and could decamp to a different online service for their daily musings and content postings. 

"As long as the creators are there, audience will be there for the content, but if the creators leave, all bets are off and we could head into an irreversible decline," Schachter says. 

"We have not yet seen any data to indicate that the creators are leaving, therefore, in our opinion, there is still time to address the problem, but we do fear that time is not TWTR’s side," he notes. 

SEE ALSO: Here's what Jack Dorsey said about selling Twitter

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Facebook destroyed its earnings  Wednesday.

It posted 59% revenue growth, a 63% growth in ad revenue and 180% growth in earnings per share compared to last year.

But, despite that growth, a big measure of engagment for Facebook was actually down last quarter. The ratio of daily active users to monthly active users fell by .5% in the US and .2% in Europe, indicating that fewer people are logging in daily.

It's the first time in nearly four years that the ratio has fallen.

"It is worthy of a call-out since we are looking for early evidence of usage transitioning to Snapchat," Brian Pitz, analyst at Jefferies, said in a note to clients.

Facebook responds by saying that the time spent per user is up by double digits.

"Snapchat could impact 3-9% of Facebook 2018 earnings per share," Pitz said. "And that we could see the (minimal) impact beginning as early as the fourth quarter."

Snapchat grew it's users by 50% in 2015, and reaches 41% of the 18-34 year old demographic in the US each day, according to the service.

The core of Facebook's social platform is probably sheltered from Snapchat's rise, as the two platforms serve different purposes. But Instagram, Facebook's photo sharing platform, might not be so lucky.

Still, it could be an early indication that users are looking for an alternative to Facebook.

Pitz still rates Facebook a buy, and actually raised his price target by $10 to $170, which means any impact Snapchat will have on Facebook is still several quarters away at least.

But it's never too early to start looking for potential risks for a company.

Facebook shares are up 33% this year, and opened Thursday at $127.52.

SEE ALSO: Facebook smashes earnings, stock soars

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Instagram has Snapchat envy.

That much is clear from a new feature the Facebook-owned app announced on Tuesday called Stories. You can share a photo or video (up to 10 seconds long) with your friends on Instagram that disappears after 24 hours.

Sound familiar?

It should: Snapchat has an almost identical product that it also calls Stories. 

The familiarity between the two apps doesn't stop there; Instagram's camera interface for creating Stories lets you doodle in different colors and add fun stickers.

Look familiar?Instagram

Here's how Instagram describes the new feature, which will be made available soon on iPhone and Android:

"With Instagram Stories, you don’t have to worry about overposting. Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day — with as much creativity as you want. You can bring your story to life in new ways with text and drawing tools. The photos and videos will disappear after 24 hours and won’t appear on your profile grid or in feed."

Like Snapchat, Instagram Stories from your friends will be shown in circular thumbnails at the top of your feed that you can tap to view. A story you share will only be visible to your friends if you have a private account — otherwise it will be visible to anyone who stumbles on your profile.

Instagram

Instagram is doing something different from Snapchat by letting you share a story with a group of friends. You can also tap on the left of the screen while watching a story to rewind. But apart from that, the feature works almost identically to Snapchat.

Instagram already has celebrities like Nick Jonas using its Stories feature.Instagram

Reports have said that Instagram (along with Facebook) has seen a decline in sharing, which may explain why the app is trying to replicate how Snapchat works. Facebook tried to buy Snapchat in 2013 and has since released multiple attempts to compete with the messaging app, including failed clones called Poke and Slingshot.

While you can only draw over Instagram Stories, add text, and apply a few color filters now, it would make sense for the Facebook-owned MSQRD app's animated face masks to show up in the app eventually. That would put Instagram Stories even more closely on par with Snapchat and its 3D face Lenses.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systromtold The New York Times in a recent interview that, “Stories will alleviate a ton of the pressure people have to post their absolute best stuff.”

little circular thumbnails at the top of your feed, and you tap to progress through a story like you can on Snapchat.

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Snapchat and the National Football League announced a new two-year partnership on Tuesday.

The extension of the pair's existing deal will see Snapchat broadcast highlights from every single game next season within its Live Story feature. Snapchat will also help the NFL produce Live Stories for the NFL Draft and the NFL Scouting Combine.

Live Stories collect together a series of Snaps from fans, Snapchat's own on-the-ground reporters, and, as Recode pointed out, could also potentially include broadcast-quality footage.

Other major sports leagues including the MLB, NCAA, NHL, NBA, and PGA also have Live Stories partnerships with Snapchat, which also has a deal with NBC Universal to feature content from the upcoming Rio Olympics.

The new deal will also see NFL become the first sports league with a "Discover" channel, where content from publishers such as Vice, MTV, and Cosmopolitan appears in the app.

Mashable first broke news of the NFL Discover channel in July after spotting the league had published a job posting for a Snapchat editor.

Snapchat also plans to produce specific Geofilters — images users can apply to their snaps when they are in a specific location — for all 32 NFL clubs. 

Last week, Twitter announced it had also cut a deal with the NFL— as well as Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League — to livestream games and behind-the-scenes content.

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On Tuesday, Facebook-owned Instagram released a new feature called Stories that has an uncanny resemblance to Snapchat Stories.

Just like Snapchat, Instagram will now let you share with select friends your special photos and videos, which will disappear after 24 hours.

Although companies iterate on each other's products all the time, this move stands out in part because Facebook has a long history of trying to clone Snapchat features. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even tried to buy the company some time ago.

And with Facebook and Snapchat locked in a fierce battle for users and ad dollars, the familiar look of Instagram's latest feature did not go unnoticed by the creators of the original disappearing-photos app.

One Snapchatter told Business Insider that they thought it was funny that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom admitted its copycatting rather bluntly in interviews. Systrom told TechCrunch's Josh Constine that Snapchat deserves "all the credit" for Stories.

The company declined to comment on the similarities, but here are some of our other favorite responses from Snapchat employees on Twitter:

Jack Brody, a product designer at Snapchat, likened Instagram's move to Melania Trump's plagiarized speech:

Tobias McGuigan, another employee, busts out some solid hashtag-sarcasm:

Nick Allen, who works on product at Snapchat, references a previous tweet from last month, calling out Facebook's Quick Updates, a Snapchat-like product that Facebook was testing:

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg is officially the new Bill Gates, and that should make startups nervous

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Teenagers are serious about their Snapchat game.

Since the launch of the Snapchat “streaks” feature in 2015, a competitive flavor has entered the app. The feature keeps track of how many consecutive days two people have been snapchatting, displaying the number of days on the right side of the friend's name. While many of us might not care about our streaks, some teens strive to get the highest numbers possible.

But these serious snapchatters have one huge problem during the summer: sleepaway camp (most of which do not allow everyday cell phone usage if any at all). Camp-bound snapchatters knew that their most valued streaks would be in jeopardy. So what do they do? Have someone else maintain their streaks for them. And that’s how I got the gig.

My 13-year-old sister was headed to camp for two weeks. In fear that she would not be able to get on Snapchat everyday, she enlisted both my other sister and me to take over her account (asking both of us to do it increased the chance that we won’t forget).

After two weeks and losing one of her major streaks (205 days) this is what I learned about the scary world of teenage snapchatters.

SEE ALSO: Instagram cloning Snapchat reveals a huge problem with the social network

They often have multiple unopened snapchats: With so many snapchats coming in and out, it's hard to keep up. It's easier just to let them pile up and go through them all at once.

One of my sister's friends was responsible for 8 other Snapchat accounts

RAW Embed

"I thought it would be fun to go on everyone's accounts, but it's almost the end of the summer and I'm so happy because it was so annoying," said my sister's friend, Anna. "I did it because I wanted [my friends] to be happy when they came home [from camp] with bigger streaks with the people they care about."

The longer the streak, the more you love someone

RAW Embed

This might not be true in all cases, but streaks become a measure of how much you like someone. When my sister's 16-year-old friend was interested in a boy from school, she told me that he must be interested too since they had well over a 100-day Snapchat streak. 

While there have been mixed reactions to Instagram's me-too version of Snapchat, there's one big difference between the two social services: the landing screen.
 

The contrasting landing screens, which was pointed out by Alex Huang of Fast Company, reveals an important difference in philosophy between the two companies. 

Here's why:

When I open Snapchat, my own awkward smile stares back at me, forever prompting me to snap another selfie. Instagram, on the other hand, immediately shows me the current stories shared by the people I follow. 

This difference may seem small, but Huang emphasized that these two landing pages indicate different priorities between the platforms.  

Snapchat, he said, is prioritizing content creation while Instagram is prioritizing content consumption. By making its landing screen your camera, Snapchat is first asking users to create. And while Instagram's latest update may use almost identical technology, the app's landing page remains the Instagram feed, with the disappearing stories now scrollable at the top. Effectively, Instagram is first asking users to consume. 

While these are clearly two different approaches, I think we can ultimately agree that both social media platforms are reaching for the same end: getting more users to spend more time in-app. 

SEE ALSO: Why 'Snapchat stars' love Instagram's new copycat product

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When Facebook-owned Instagram announced a product earlier this week that bears a striking resemblance to Snapchat Stories, many users rolled their eyes.

But there's a surprising group of people who are particularly excited about the new development: Snapchat stars.

Like Vine, YouTube, and Instagram, Snapchat has a group of mega-popular, homegrown stars who make big bucks by working with brands. They'll do account takeovers for companies like Burger King or Walmart, or get paid to create original, sponsored content on their own feeds.

But Snapchat doesn't make life easy for creators. The app doesn't have a user suggestion page or an easy way to share snaps, so it's difficult for stars to grow their audiences or go viral in the typical sense.

Instagram, however, has a "discovery" portal that features regular users instead of just publishers and events, as well as a more straightforward search interface. Plus, more brands are already using it.

For the handful of Snapchat stars Business Insider talked to, Instagram's copycat Stories product looks so far like a big, potentially lucrative opportunity that they can't wait to start toying with.

Why they're excited

Right now, Mike Platco has about 10,000 followers on Instagram, a trivial number compared with the audience of about 300,000 he has amassed on Snapchat thanks to his creative drawings and goofy antics.

But now that he can bring his Snapchat charm to Instagram Stories, he's excited to start trying to build that audience — while hopefully porting over the kind of clients he already works with. He thinks Instagram's similarities will be an advantage: He already specializes in creating content in the nonstatic, creative vertical-video format that he thinks brands will be looking for.

"I'm really excited to start experimenting with it to see if it has the legs to be another great spot for cool stuff to live," he said.

Branden Harvey agrees and says he's already starting to talk to his Snapchat clients about Instagram Stories. Instagram has many more users (brands and people alike) than Snapchat — ~300 million daily active users versus about 150 million daily active users.

Harvey doesn't expect to stop creating Snapchat Stories, but he thinks Instagram's new product could affect the amount of new "influencers" joining.

"I've had a few friends who are influencers who were thinking of jumping onto Snapchat who texted me and said, 'Whelp, now I don't have to join,'" he said. "I don't think brands or influencers with existing platforms on Snapchat will abandon ship, but I think people who were on the edge about joining Snapchat will think, 'We don't need a presence here.'"

Cyrene Quiamco, who quit her job last fall to focus on Snapchat full time, says her frustration with the app's lack of a way for users to discover her has her eyeing Instagram eagerly. She's not planning to abandon Snapchat, but if Instagram caters more to creators — who knows?

"It's all up for grabs," she says. "I'm up for grabs."

Nick Cicero, the CEO of creator-network company Delmondo, says brands he has talked to so far are into it. Many will still want to chase the specific audience that Snapchat has more ownership over, but there are a lot of advantages to trying the same kind of content on Instagram.

"Instagram has a much more defined ad tool, audience data, analytics, and API," he said. "There are a lot of brands that have already grown really large Instagram audiences. Now they can turn on Stories and create that same live-ish content."

SEE ALSO: Snapchat employees had some hilarious reactions to Instagram's 'copycat' product

SEE ALSO: Meet the Snapchat stars who quit their day jobs and now make eye-popping amounts of money

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Facebook clearly has no problem copying Snapchat.

Starting Friday, people in Canada and Brazil will see something different when they open the Facebook app: a prompt to open their phone's camera and take a selfie. They'll be able to add Olympics-themed face filters and post them directly to their profile.

Snapchat, of course, already works this way.

Facebook is being surprisingly candid about the fact that, by encouraging people to use their cameras and post selfies, it's following in Snapchat's footsteps.

“I think they’ve [Snapchat] done a really good job of building a modern composer,"Facebook product manager Sachin Monga told TechCrunch. "The thing that’s created the change from text to visual sharing is that everyone has a phone and a camera in their pocket, but they’ve definitely done a really good job with it.”

Facebook didn't say if it plans to make the new camera prompt available outside of Canada and Brazil. A spokesperson described the test as "experimental." Android and iPhone users of the Facebook app will have the feature in Canada starting Friday along with iPhone users in Brazil.

The update is the first time Facebook has incorporated selfie filters from MSQRD, a Belarus startup it bought in March for an undisclosed sum.

Facebook has a long history of copying Snapchat, which it tried to buy for around $3 billion in 2013. Poke and Slingshot were both failed apps Facebook tried to position as more ephemeral, Snapchat-like messaging platforms. Instagram's new Stories feature is the company's most blatant Snapchat clone to date.

We asked Snapchat what it thinks of this latest Facebook update, but a company spokeswoman declined to comment.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat employees had some hilarious reactions to Instagram's 'copycat' product

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Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Instagram's latest move likely doesn't feel like much of a compliment to Snapchat. 

The Facebook-owned photo sharing app just launched Stories, a new feature that looks almost exactly like Snapchat's Stories product. Both let users post photos and videos to a timeline that disappears in 24 hours. 

Although it's easy to make fun of Instagram's copycat move, it could have some serious consequences for Snapchat, last valued at nearly $18 billion, as it tries to grow its fledgling advertising business. 

A bigger platform with better tools 

One reason why Snapchat is so attractive to brands is that the Stories feature lets them get their message across through a full-screen, live-ish format that's much more like TV advertising than what you'd see in other social feeds. 

Now, Instagram offers largely the same experience, but with a broader reach and more time-tested tools.

Instagram has about 300 million daily active users versus Snapchat's reported 150 million. Instagram also makes it much easier for brands to cultivate organic followings through search and discovery. 

Nike has already seen that size difference in action, telling Ad Age that it got 800,000 views on a newly posted Instagram Story versus 66,000 views on its most popular Snapchat Story. Snapchat may have a higher ratio of loyal millennial users than Instagram, but Instagram has way more users overall.

Plus, Snapchat's advertising business is still very young. The company just launched a bunch of new tools and ad products in June and looked like it was finally ready to usher in a "new era" that advertisers have been craving. By contrast, brands have been familiar with Instagram's format and tools for a long time, in particular because they're largely the same as Facebook's. The platform doesn't offer Story ads yet, but many brands have already started creating organic Stories, and it makes sense that a sponsored option will eventually roll out. 

With this launch, Instagram now gives brands the best of both worlds: The live-ish content of Snapchat and the traditional static business profiles, too. 

"Advertisers are already very comfortable with Instagram," Nick Cicero, the CEO of creator-network company Delmondo, tells Business Insider. "If I’m a brand and I haven’t spent time or money on Snapchat yet, I don't get it yet, now I might not feel like I have to." 

Instagram's new feature doesn't spell death for Snapchat, but it certainly could slow its advertising growth at a crucial time. 

For a more fun analysis on the new competition, watch comedian Casey Neistat explain how Instagram "MURDERS" Snapchat here:

SEE ALSO: Snapchat employees had some hilarious reactions to Instagram's 'copycat' product

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NBCUniversal has signed a major content partnership with Snapchat, which will begin with giving wannabe popstars the chance to appear on "The Voice,"Mashable reports.

The two companies will launch "The Voice on Snapchat" on August 22, allowing Snapchat users to showcase their vocal skills in a five-part short-form series.

The submissions, which must be submitted by Tuesday this week, will be viewed by "The Voice" coaches, who will help select some to be shown during the show’s NBC premiere.

"The Voice on Snapchat" is the first of "many original" programmes that will emerge from the partnership between NBCUniversal and Snapchat, according to Mashable.

Other shows poised to get the Snapchat treatment include "Saturday Night Live" and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."

Also under the deal, NBCUniversal will develop and sell advertising packages incorporating Snapchat ad products into its sponsorship, mobile, and video offerings.

It is the most significant TV deal Snapchat has signed to date. Its formal partnerships t date have tended to centre on Snapchat Discover, where it has relationships with brands including MTV, National Geographic, and Vice.

Snapchat content vice president Nick Bell said: "Together with NBCUniversal, we believe there is a huge creative and commercial opportunity around mobile-first programming and are excited to bring these future formats to our community."

Rob Hayes, executive vice president of digital at NBC Entertainment, added: "’The Voice’ is a show about the discovery and development of new artists and we see this new Snapchat series as a way to take the amazing storytelling of The Voice and tailor it to the mobile generation." 

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Instagram Stories has brought Instagram and Snapchat into direct competition.

And while Snapchat has the cachet of being the originator of the Stories format, the closed nature of its platform means that it lacks the same network effects as Instagram. If Snapchat wants to succeed against Instagram in the long-run – in both the domain of ephemeral sharing and more broadly in social media – then it might need to take a leaf from its rival's Instagram page and emulate the open-nature of its network. 

Network effects cause a product's value to compound as more users buy in. Every successful social platform (including Snapchat) owes its prosperity to network effects. As more users sign up, there are more people to connect with and more content to interact with.

This increases the benefits of being the platform, which keeps existing users on platform and attracts new sign ups. On the other hand, flailing social networks fall short because "they never caught on" and hit critical mass, while extinct social networks die out when no one uses their platform anymore. 

The openness of Instagram's platform and its superior user base give it a key advantage over Snapchat. Instagram counts over 300 million daily active users (DAUs), almost double that of Snapchat. Users on Instagram can thus potentially tap into a much larger audience. Moreover, Instagram's platform is open and encourages the discoverability of new content, which helps the audience-building endeavor. In contrast, Snapchat's is more closed and difficult to find content on unless you already know exactly where to look.  

These are the specific factors that lead Instagram to have stronger network effects than Snapchat:

• Search functionalities to find friends and content. Instagram lets users search by people, tags, and places, and will display a list of results that users can then explore. On the other hand, Snapchat only lets users search for other accounts, and displays results that include the exact strings that are typed in. This means that adding another user on Snapchat requires you to know their exact user name. Meanwhile, Instagram also has other built-in features to encourage the discovery of people you might know. For instance, you can explore a user's profile, see who they follow, and all the people who follow them. And new users on the platform, or those not following a lot of people, will also see a tab at the top of their feed suggesting people to follow. Snapchat on the other hand does not allow users to explore each other's profiles in as deep a manner, nor does it include features to help the discovery of other users within your network.
• Discovery portal to find content from regular users. Instagram's search tab also highlights trending content, posts that you may be interested in, and a tool to discover people who are either in your network or whose posts are similar to content you've engaged with in the past. Snapchat, on the other hand, does not have any features of the sort. Its Discover section only displays content from brands, publishers, media companies, or Snapchat's editorial team, but nothing from regular users. Further, posts on Snapchat are for the most part only broadcasted to friends (unless they serendipitously make it on to the public-facing Live Stories feed), but adding new friends on Snapchat can be complicated, as explained above. 
• Greater ability for content to go viral organically. Instagram's platform encourages the growth of viral content, via its trending section, and via liking and commenting from users within your network. Snapchat on the other hand lacks tools to highlight and share viral content. Its Discover section only features content curated by editorial professionals, and there is no seamless way to share snaps, making it it hard for content to go viral on Snapchat in the traditional sense. Consequently, most Snapchat content that goes viral on the internet does so after being reposted to other platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. 
• Huge, preexisting followings on the platform. Some brands already have massive followings on Instagram, and building a similarly large audience on Snapchat would require significant time and effort. For example, Nike has over 58 million followers on Instagram, and recreating a same-size audience on Snapchat right now would require it to capture about a third of Snapchat's total DAUs. In a similar vein, Nike's post on Instagram Stories already easily break 800,000 views, whereas its best-performing video on Snapchat only got 66,000 views, according to Ad Age. For this reason, some brands might hesitate to set up shop on Snapchat, and the introduction of Instagram Stories will further help to stem the flow of brands from Instagram to Snapchat.

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While most people use Snapchat just to send snapshots of their life to friends, a growing media powerhouse in the hills of Los Angeles has been figuring out how to run a media company on a platform where everything disappears in 24 hours.

So far it's worked, and Arsenic has both the followers and the funding now to prove it.

On Snapchat, more than 700,000 people watch the budding company's videos every day. On Instagram, Arsenic's more than a million followers means it has double the fans of Maxim Magazine and already one-fifth of Playboy's. 

The company's viral rise has been such a threat that Playboy has already turned around and offered to buy the company outright.

Even with its early success, Arsenic has remained focused on its vision of becoming the crowd-sourced, trend-setting MTV of this generation and is announcing today that it raised $3 million in seed funding to do it. 

The money will go toward hiring more full-time staff beyond a handful and building the technology it needs to help its "for the people, by the people" model that lets anyone become part of the Arsenic community.

"They’re really building a connection to a specific type of native user, whether you want to call it the Snapchat generation or whatever else," said Omar El-Ayat, vice president of Crosslink Capital who co-led the round with CrossCut Ventures. "It’s native to the platform but also to the native to the audience."

Why it's turning heads

Arsenic launched in June 2015 with the mantra that no one tells anyone how they should look. Its original channel on Snapchat and Instagram is all about about women wanting to feel beautiful in their own way, whether that's lounging by a pool or buying candy at a grocery store, and not being told by a photographer or media company what beauty is.

Arsenic doesn't pay for any of its Snapchat content. The entire platform is crowd-sourced, with people volunteering to take over the account and showcase their lives. The up and coming models want to be discovered. Brands are clamoring to have their products, like cars, show up as photo-shoot props. People tune in because it's real, raw, and bite-sized for social media — and never the same two days in a row. 

But Arsenic's founders Billy Hawkins and Amanda Micallef are looking to build something bigger than just a Snapchat channel. The pair told Business Insider that they'll be putting the money to use by starting to build communities on more platforms, including Facebook, and work on building out its Arsenic Music channel too.

The funding round includes traditional venture capital firms, like CrossCut Ventures, Crosslink Capital, and KEC Ventures, but has also attracted investment from media folks who see its potential to become the next big media company. The other investors include Maverick/LiveNation, Honest Company's Brian Lee, Broadway Video/SNL, Cooley, Good Universe, Bustle CEO Bryan Goldberg, and Chris Altchek of Mic.com.

"Viacom did everything from MTV to sports. You can have different brands and messages. They started in a place today that is racy edgy," Crosslink's El-Ayat said. "I think you’ll see a more diversification of voice. We could diversify into sports and businesses."

While its founding is unashamedly rooted in the "new sexy," Clinton Foy, CrossCut Ventures' managing director, pointed to the early days of companies like MTV, Snapchat, and even Facebook as examples of a company starting out pushing boundaries of what was considered the norm.

"When MTV the idea was first pitched, no one believed in it. This is the history and the pattern recognition we see in other big businesses," Foy said. "I had belief in the beginning that they were onto something, because of the way it was taking off, because of the viral element."

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Snapchat has come under fire over one of its animated selfie lenses that turned people into Asian anime caricatures, reports Mic.

The lense, which has since been permanently removed from the app, depicted a face with closed eyes and raised eyebrows. After discovering the lense, people quickly took to Twitter to call it "overly-racist" and "yellowface."

Snapchat told Business Insider that the lense was inspired by anime and intended to be playful.

This isn't the first time Snapchat has received blowback over its selfie lenses. The company was met with similar outcry after it released a Bob Marley filter on April 20.

SEE ALSO: Facebook wants people to share selfies like they do on Snapchat

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While the popularity of a new class of beauty bloggers and vloggers has undoubtedly transformed digital entertainment, a new Women’s Wear Daily report sheds some fascinating light on the financial impact that these creators are having on the beauty industry as a whole. And, in many respects, digital creators have supplanted traditional print beauty editors, according to WWD, who in the past were considered the industry’s most prominent tastemakers.

For instance, when Arielle Charnas — who operates a blog called Something Navy— posted about a Peter Thomas Roth Rose Stem Cell Bio-Repair Gel Mask (which is priced at $52) on Snapchat, it spurred sales of 502 total jars — or roughly $17,500 worth of product in a single day, WWD reports. Similarly, last month, when Charnas Snapchatted about Yves Saint Laurent Mascara Volume Effet Faux Cils Shocking ($32), 422 mascaras sold in one day, amounting to $13,500.

And creators are being paid handsomely for raking in money for brands. Twenty-two-year-old blogger Kristina Bazan, for instance, was appointed brand ambassador for L’Oréal Paris last October in what WWD suggests was a seven-figure deal.

As the tides turn, brands are shifting advertising dollars away from traditional media. Cosmetics goliath The Estée Lauder Companies, for instance, abandoned print advertising for its Smashbox brand altogether two-and-a-half years ago. (In May, the brand launched a lipstick in partnership with YouTube star Lilly Singh). And in 2012, the Estée Lauder brand inked a reported six-figure deal with blogger Emily Schuman of Cupcakes & Cashmere— one of the first long-term, big-money deals of its kind, per WWD.

“The new celebrities are the social influencers, and quite honestly some make more money than the people who get Emmy Awards,” said Lauder executive group president John Demsey told the outlet. “If you can deliver an audience and prove that someone can buy your product, you can get paid. As long as that works it will continue to blossom.”

SEE ALSO: Apple is replacing the iPhone’s headphone jack with a speaker port — but there won’t be a speaker in it

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