Social App SnapChat Seeing Exponential Growth

150 million pictures a day. That’s how many photos are being uploaded everyday via SnapChat, the popular social app. The company is experiencing exponential growth, leaving other social mobile apps in the dust. According to an article by GigaOM, SnapChat was seeing 20 million photos uploaded everyday in October 2012. Instagram’s user activity is small in comparison with only 40 million photos uploaded a day.

The app has taken off with teenagers, growing in appeal due to the impermanence of each photo shared. 10 seconds after an image is viewed by the recipient, it’s deleted from Snapchat’s servers. SnapChat has grown almost 8 fold since October and shows no signs of slowing down. The vast majority of the app’s users are uploading their pics via an iPhone and 80% are based within the US.

As a San Diego iPhone app developer it is intriguing to see the quickness with which dominant apps like Facebook and Instagram are being disrupted by newcomers like SnapChat. The mobile app ecosystem is moving at such an incredibly swift pace that the “impermanence” factor that is the driving force behind SnapChat’s popularity may end up being the undoing of many more established players. This app’s success is a great case study for the mobile app developer community on how the network effect can propel an app to hit critical mass.