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Snapchat didn’t just file SEC documents for a massive new $1.8 billion round of funding this week, the company also had its pitch deck leaked, revealing some interesting insights into the company’s usage and revenue. Particularly striking: Snapchat may already have more daily active users than Twitter.
The pitch deck, which was obtained by Techcrunch this week, shows that Snapchat had 110 million daily active users in December of 2015. Unfortunately, Twitter stopped releasing metrics for daily active users some time ago, instead focusing on monthly active users.
However, Twitter CFO Anthony Noto said earlier in 2015 that the company’s ratio for daily actives vs. monthly actives was 44 percent, meaning that slightly less than half of the company’s monthly active users returned to the service every day. ( A Twitter spokesperson denied that the 44 percent ratio is currently accurate, but declined to provide any additional details on daily actives. “We don’t report DAUs on a regular basis,” she said.)
Twitter had 305 million monthly active users in Q4 of 2015. Using that ratio for some back-of-the-envelope math, one arrives at an approximate number of about 134 million daily active users — still notably more than Snapchat’s 110 million in December.
But Snapchat has one key advantage over Twitter: healthy growth. The pitch deck that leaked this week shows an average user growth of 65 percent year-over-year over the last eight quarters. Twitter’s growth problems on the other hand have been well documented; in Q1 of 2016, its number of monthly actives grew just 3 percent year-over-year. Based on the same ratio of daily actives vs. monthly actives, this would equal about 136 million daily active users for Twitter in Q1.
Assuming that Snapchat’s growth holds steady, the company may have reached as many as 134 million daily active users by March of 2016, and could be on track to reach 147 million daily active users by the end of next month. In other words: Snapchat may already be bigger than Twitter, at least with regards to daily active users.
It’s worth noting that these projections aren’t exact science. Twitter’s ratio of daily actives vs. monthly actives could have changed. In fact, for much of 2014, the rate was at 48 percent.
Snapchat’s growth could have also slowed down, even though the company’s ability to raise massive funding rounds from investors suggests otherwise. A Snapchat spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s current metrics as well as the leaked pitch deck, and instead reiterated that Snapchat has more than 100 million daily active users — a number that the company released late last year.
Twitter also maintains that its reach goes far beyond logged-in users. Including logged-out users that read tweets on Twitter.com as well as embedded on third-party websites, Twitter reaches more than 800 million users every month, according to financial filings.
Still, Snapchat’s explosive growth should bother Twitter and its investors, especially if Snapchat succeeds at selling its users to brands that would have otherwise advertised on Twitter. Snapchat only just begun its monetization efforts, but the leaked data suggests that revenue is also growing at a significant rate. In Q4 of 2015, Snapchat brought in $33 million, according to the pitch deck, compared to just 17 million in Q3, $5 million in Q2 and $4 million in Q1.
