The next chapter in Snapchat’s story?

When you hear the name ‘Snapchat’, what comes to mind?

Rewind a couple of years, and it may have been ‘sexting’ or ‘revenge porn’ scandals. Unsurprisingly, there was a serious need for the app to shake off its bad rep, and show both consumers and brands that it could be a major player in social media.

Today, it seems to have succeeded. Its 100 million daily active users (50% of whom are over 25) now share 9,000 ‘snaps’ a second; thanks, in part, to an investment in the app’s basic chat capabilities along with the introduction of some highly sharable features.

With such high usage, advertising potential on the platform is immense – brands can create engaging, low budget content to connect with their audience in real time.

In spite of such success, it’s interesting to think what might be next for Snapchat.

We can look to the Innovation Adoption Lifecycle to predict the journey for such platforms. Snapchat appears to be reaching peak majority, but it’s maybe only a matter of time before the novelty of funny filters wears off and it’s just not ‘cool’ anymore.

Should Snapchat look to Facebook as a warning? Facebook’s been suffering a migration of its influential, ‘early adopter’ youth audience for years, arguably as a result of consumers now viewing the site as just ‘mums and brands’. Indeed, 30% of Snapchat users choose the app because their parents don’t have it.

So it’ll be interesting to see what lies ahead for Snapchat. And what answer we’d get in five years time, if we were to ask, “When you hear the name ‘Snapchat’, what comes to mind?” (assuming the name is still known at all).