In addition to being the most popular with young people, the Chinese social network also serves as an example for its competitors.
After Facebook revolutionized social media, and Snapchat invented stories, does the future belong to TikTok ? At least that’s what the two historical platforms now seem to be convinced of. In his latest quarterly report, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel confirmed that his company was seeing a sharp drop in audience on Stories views, even as Spotlight (his TikTok copycat) saw an increasing influx of Internet users.
While hoping for a “return of the stories of friends that we could observe before the pandemic”the businessman thus explained to investors his objective of “focus on innovating our new content offerings, to better serve today’s community”.
A finding shared on the side of Facebook. Long hegemonic on the social network market, the platform also identifies TikTok as a now very real threat. In his fourth quarter 2021 financial report, it was Mark Zuckerberg himself who mentioned his competitor and those to come, explaining: “People have a lot of choices about how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly.”
Facebook in decline
It must be said that on his side, Facebook records an end of 2021 well below its forecasts. For the first time in its history, the platform is losing subscribers globally. An exodus towards the competition which is felt on its advertising revenues, with disappointing profits, and below the promises of Meta. Since its official speech, the company has lost 200 billion dollars of market value in just one day. A record that far exceeds that of 2018, when the firm lost $ 120 billion on the stock market after the formalization of lower than expected profits.
On his side Snapchat is finally profitable. Although the platform fears competition from TikTok, it has managed to develop a stable user base in 2021, and is recording greater growth than expected.
