Snapchat has revealed that its video traffic has dramatically taken off over the past six months.
The number of videos viewed on the ephemeral messaging service each day has hit 6 billion, which is triple what it was in May.
As the Financial Times points out, this figure is only 2 billion behind Facebook’s latest video figures.
That’s a remarkable result for what is a much smaller service (it has just 100 million daily active users) – not to mention one that operates on mobile only. Facebook’s 8 billion daily video views occur across mobile and PC.
Video is becoming a massively important part of social networking services. Not only is there a great appetite for such video content, but advertising rates are higher for footage than for static images or text.
Of course, it’s hard to compare Snapchat’s video offering directly with that of Facebook and indeed YouTube. Its video content is much more integral to the service, yet each video snippet is much briefer by design.
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Back in January, Snapchat rolled out its Discover feature, which supplies curated video content from top media providers like ESPN, CNN, Vice, and Warner Music.
More recently, the service launched its sponsored lenses, which enables brands to implant themselves in users’ selfies.
All in all, it’s a particularly lucrative spell for the popular messaging app.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.