2019年4月10日
Research analyst predicts Snapchat's user base in the US will decrease in 2019
The past year has been hard on Snapchat, who saw its user base shrank. eMarketer is forecasting that Snapchat’s user base will drop to 77.5 million monthly users this year, a decrease of 2.8% from 2018’s numbers.
Snapchat Stories from your friends were put back on the page as Stories from celebrities, and Snapchats and chats were listed in chronological order. Polling at the time showed just how much millennials hated the redesign. Snapchat rolled back the redesign in May to try to stave off the loss of millions of users.
eMarketer says, Instagram will pick up many of those users that are leaving Snapchat. The analysts predict that the Facebook-owned platform will have 106.7 million US users this year, and could add almost 19 million new US users by 2023.
41% of the 8,000 US teens surveyed said Snapchat was their favourite social platform, Instagram beat out Snapchat in monthly users among Gen Zers. Snapchat is still No. 1 as the favourite, more of the teens surveyed use Instagram (84%) more regularly than Snapchat (81%). Instagram is only a few percentage points behind Snapchat as teens’ favourite social platform. Instagram recently bet big in this area by adding in-app shopping, a sector that some analysts have said could generate $US10 billion in revenue by 2021.
Facebook's new Watch Party video-streaming feature is wildly popular with pirates
Facebook’s new video-streaming feature, Watch Party, is a big hit, bringing together users from across the globe. There’s just one problem: Some are using it in ways that Facebook didn’t intend, and that are almost certainly illegal.
Watch Party lets users “host” video-watching events with friends and others on the site, letting them watch simultaneously and comment or react in real time to what’s on the screen. It has also proved hugely popular with pirates, with users flocking to the feature to broadcast copyrighted movies and TV shows to strangers across Facebook.
Groups have sprung up to host these watch parties, with names like “Super Film Club Watch Party” and “Watch Party Cinema,” that often have hundreds or even thousands of users. “Watch Party Central Movie Lovers Unite” openly billed itself as “a place for movie lovers to enjoy movies together for free and discuss the films."
A Facebook representative, Carolyn Thomas, said: “We devote significant resources to address and prevent piracy for all videos on Facebook, including in Watch Parties. We have several measures in place to address infringing content." Still, not all Watch Party groups are necessarily engaged in copyright infringement.
Facebook has a long history of copyright infringement on the platform. In 2018, which reported that its groups were widely used for sharing pirated rips of popular movies. Facebook’s stated mission is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together,” but Watch Party’s adoption by pirates illustrates that the company’s features for building “community” aren’t restricted to virtuous uses.
