Snapchat is soaring in popularity, but that's just the tip of the iceberg for the social media app.
Reports emerged earlier this year that Snapchat has almost 150 million daily active users. Based off these figures, BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, estimates that Snapchat's monthly active user base (the standard metric for measuring social platforms) is about 300 million.
This makes Snapchat approximately the same size as Twitter and about 20% of the size of Facebook's core audience.
But Snapchat makes up for this comparatively smaller size with its ability to engage users. According to the BI Intelligence social engagement index, which ranks top social platforms based on time spent per user across mobile and desktop, Snapchat is five times more effective than Twitter and 10 times more effective than LinkedIn at getting users to spend time on the platform on a per-user basis.
Engagement in this case refers to any type of user interaction, activity, or passive content consumption on a platform, and these interactions vary depending on the platform.
Snapchat's ability to spur great user engagement stems from its function as a media hub and a way to privately communicate with friends. Snapchat claims that the average active user spends 25 to 30 minutes on the app every day, according to Bloomberg.
And these users take advantage of each of the app's different features. Almost 25% of all U.S. Snapchat users say they spend an equal amount of time messaging friends, watching media content through Discover and Live Stories, and following brands, according to a survey by Defy Media and Variety.
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