Snapchat boss says app has nearly 100m users, considering IPO

By Trevor Mogg Published May 27, 2015

snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The man behind ephemeral messaging app Snapchat said Tuesday the service is nearing 100 million daily active users. Evan Spiegel’s revelation, which came during an on-stage interview at the Re/code Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, came alongside another declaration – that the startup behind the popular app is considering going public.

“We really need an IPO; we have a plan for that,” the Snapchat co-founder and CEO (pictured above) told his audience. However, he added that at the moment such a move was “just another dot on the list of things to do.”

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Returning to those numbers, Spiegel said the 100 million referred to users in developed countries, a fact he hopes will appeal to brands interested in placing ads on the service.

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The startup, however, has always been cagey about user numbers, and the figure for “developed countries” means it’s still difficult to gauge the true extent of the app’s popularity on a wider scale. Putting four-year-old Snapchat up against others, we see that the big daddy of social media, Facebook, currently has more than a billion regular users, while Twitter and Instagram have just over 300 million each.

Snapchat reportedly rejected a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook two years ago, with Spiegel confirming Tuesday he has no intention of looking seriously at any such offers that may come its way in the future.

Meanwhile, the startup has been raising funds from a slew of interested companies, with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, for example, earlier this year investing $200 million in the Los Angeles-based startup.

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Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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