Snapchat against Facebook : Will the April 1st prank feature give snapchat the win?

Snapchat usership dropped after IG stories was introduced. And this was the first Facebook owned social media that explored the 24hours lasting snapchat feature. Needless to say what has happened within the past few months that Facebook has incorporated the 24hours snapchat story feature into all its social media networks - Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger.

All this happened shortly after Snapchat got public in a record breaking estimate of 20 - 25 billion dollars. I should point out that snapchat had refused selling to Facebook for 3 billion dollars in 2013. One would then begin to wonder not just what the fate of snapchat is, with its main feature yanked by Facebook and integrated into all its social media networks. But, also if the attempt is Facebook's bid to see the end of this fast growing 'baby' social media network. Shit happens in business, right? Although, snapchat rose fastly to have over 150million users and generate 400 million dollars annually, the business is yet to make profits.   

However, a greater percentage of snapchat users are between the ages of 18 and 25.  This reduces the chances of snapchat being ideal for digital marketing. As there are researches pointing to the fact that the generation X use social media more than the millenials. Though, Digital marketers with snapchat takeover strategy has been able to use snapchat for marketing. There is still the challenge of measurability of the marketing campaign. This is because of the snapchat privacy feature and the short span of snaps. The success of every marketing campaign should be measured and analyzed, otherwise marketing is incomplete. Regardless, Kylie Jenner recorded success selling her lip products on snapchat, and Nigeria Bobrisky points to the fact that there are possible marketing successes, only that the success can't be measured effectively. This then raises fears for the survival of snapchat even though their filters are better than those on Facebook owned platforms.   

And snapchat isn't just sitting to watch Facebook win. It introduced the search feature in January. This was made possible by snapchat acquisition of Vurb, a search and recommendations app last year. With this feature, the snapchat machine learning algorithm sorts posts into relevant feeds that users can look for. Oh my, and snapchat April 1st prank is the new talk. Snapchat on Saturday added the Instagram filter feature, making snapchats look like instagram posts. This feature has sub-menus for likes and comments and a little comic in the form of having a post liked by 'mom'. May the best man win.