Snapchat entered the top 5 social networks in Russia for the first time

The American social network got into the rating due to the fall of the audience of "My World"

Snapchat is now the fifth largest social network in Russia, according to MediaScope data for June 2019. This service is very popular among teenagers in the US, but in Russia for the first time entered the list of the largest social networks. MediaScope estimates the audience of Internet projects on desktop computers and mobile devices among users aged 12-64 living in cities with a population of more than 100,000 people.

It was Snapchat that was the first to launch and come up with the so-called "stories" format - the publication of photos and videos that disappear a day after they are published. Now “stories” are actively using Instagram, Facebookand the Russian social network VKontakte. In 2017, the company held an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, the entire company was valued at $25 billion. On Monday, at 20.00 Moscow time, the company's capitalization was $22.2 billion. Snapchat is most popular with American users, and young people 12–17 years old prefer his any other social network. So, in 2018, more than 16 million teenagers in the United States used Snapchat at least once a month, and 12.8 million and 11.5 million, respectively, used Instagram and Facebook, according to the analytical company eMarketer. If you take an audience of all ages, then Snapchat accounts for more than a third of all social media users in the United States, this is the fourth largest after Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. However, eMarketer recently warned Snapchat investors that the service could lose its audience this year for the first time.

The Russian audience of Snapchat has doubled over the past six months, according to MediaScope data: in December 2018, this service was used by 1.7 million residents of large cities, and in June 2019 - 3.2 million. But the gap from the leaders of the rating is still very is large: the audience of Vkontakte is 37.9 million people, Instagram - 30.6 million, Odnoklassniki - 23.1 million, Facebook - 21.6 million. Their positions in the MediaScope rating have not changed over the past six months.

n the list of the largest social networks in Russia, Snapchat took the place of "My World". This service was launched in 2007 and is part of the Mail.ru Group. The service combined the content of several Mail.ru projects at that time - Video.Mail.ru, Photo.Mail.ru, Blogs.Mail.ru, etc. For several years this social network was very popular, but in In recent years, its audience has decreased by almost an order of magnitude. In November 2014, the monthly audience of My World among desktop computer users throughout Russia was 25 million people, at the beginning of 2016 it did not exceed 18 million people, and by the summer of 2017 it had decreased to 9 million people. In June 2019, Moi Mir had 5 million such users.

Mail.ru has never separately disclosed the revenue of Moi Mir, so it is impossible to understand how the social network's revenues have changed . 

Moi Mir is now a niche project for Mail.ru Group, a representative of the holding told Vedomosti. He did not answer the question about the reasons for the decline in the audience of the service, but noted that as long as the holding sees people's interest in this product, Mail.ru will support it.

Most likely, the decrease in the holding's interest in Moi Mir is due to the much more active development of its other two social networks. In 2007, the holding bought Odnoklassniki, and in 2014 it gained control over the largest Russian social network, VKontakte.

As long as My World has a significant audience and the project does not generate losses, the holding will continue to support it, VTB analyst Vladimir Bespalov agrees. But Mail.ru has not been developing the network for a long time, focusing on Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.

 He calls Snapchat's prospects vague - the company clearly does not consider Russia as a strategic market and is unlikely to reconsider its position in the near future due to the high level of regulation, including the requirement to store user data within the country. Therefore, most likely, Snapchat will remain a niche social network, concludes Bespalov. A Snapchat representative did not respond to Vedomosti's request.