Facebook Barely Poked Snapchat, Active Usage Data Shows

After initially missing the boat on mobile-photo sharing and then having to turn around and plunk down nearly $1 billion for Instagram, Facebook wasn’t going to let a hot app (and potential existential threat) emerge too quickly again. Although Facebook is more than 1 billion users strong, the company still has a paranoia and mortal fear that the next social network could emerge out of a distant dorm room. With promising engagement and growth metrics, Snapchat had quietly piqued some interest about a year ago before entering a hyper-growth phase with about 5 billion photos sent in a year plus $13.5 million in funding led by Benchmark Capital. By late last year, Snapchat was sending 50 million photos a day compared to 300 million photos posted on Facebook per day. Facebook responded much faster this time with an app called Poke that they built in about 12 days. It had extras like the ability to send simple text messages, in addition to video and photos. It also allowed group conversations. ...

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