Snapchat

Instant messaging platform Snapchat has crossed 100 million monthly users in India and according to Spiegel, the company has made a concerted effort over the past year to organise its team and make investments in its products to realise monetisation and community growth opportunities.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Snap reported $1.3 billion in revenue (up 42 per cent) with a net income of $22.6 million. The company posted 64 per cent growth in its full-year revenue. "2021 was an exciting year for Snap and we made significant progress growing our business and serving our global community," said CEO Evan Spiegel.

Multimedia messaging app Snapchat has now collaborated with Kim Kardashian West and Kris Jenner for #KindnessChallenge. #KindessChallenge is all about how you spread kindness by doing something good for your family, friends or community. In this new challenge Snapchatters can join the mother-daughter duo. This challenge is available on Spotlight (Snapchat's in-app entertainment platform for UGC content).

Snapchat's music partners include Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, MERLIN Members, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell, Kobalt, BMG, NMPA members, DistroKid, and thousands of individual songwriters/music publishers. The app has over 200 million users who engage with augmented reality every day and it's now expanding the music experience for their customer base.

The study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, showed that joining Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 was significantly associated with having online friends or joining social media sites that parents would disapprove of, more problematic digital technology behaviour, more unsympathetic online behaviour, and greater likelihood of online harassment and sexual harassment victimisation.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, told the companies that everything they do is to add users, especially kids and keep them on apps for longer, reports CNET. Blumenthal said he has heard from parents about the "rabbit hole" teenagers go down when they log onto Snap, TikTok and YouTube. His office, which created accounts on TikTok and YouTube as part of their own research, also found that extreme dieting and eating disorder content is easy to find on these platforms.

Snap, which is the parent company of Snapchat, tweeted: "We're aware that some Snapchatters are having issues using the app right now - hang tight, we're looking into it!" Down Detector, which is an app outage tracking website, reported the problems with Snapchat. While 41 per cent has trouble with the app, 27 per cent of those affected were facing trouble with sharing photos and videos.

"Powered with information from BallotReady, this simple tool will help Snapchatters explore hundreds of opportunities to run for local office based on the issues they care most about -- from City Neighborhood Board and Township Council to School Board and State Representative," the company said in a statement.

The app is now rolling out changes it announced back in May during its Partner Summit event. The updates include more prominent placement of the "scan" feature -- now located directly under the camera's shutter button -- and new capabilities that will suggest lenses and music based on your surroundings. Snap has been experimenting with visual search, called "scan" since 2019.

Snapchat said in a tweet that it had resolved the issue, suggesting that users should update the app from iOS store. "The issue has been resolved. If you're still having trouble, please manually update your app in the App Store," the company posted. The platform experiencing a massive issue as of Thursday evening, with more than 125,000 users reported problems on website outage tracking platform Downdetector.