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Snapchat’s user base was growing quickly — but slowed down last quarter

Snap added 50 million new users last year, but just five million in Q4.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel onstage
Spiegel at the 2015 Code Conference
Recode / Asa Mathat

Snapchat’s user base grew by 50 million daily active users in 2016, but that growth slowed considerably at the tail end of the year.

After averaging more than 15 million new daily active users through the first three quarters of 2016, Snapchat added just five million new users in Q4.

It wrote in its S-1 document filed Thursday that growth was “relatively flat in the early part of the quarter,” and said that “increased competition” was one of the key reasons. (Looking at you, Facebook and Instagram.)

Snapchat still grew 48 percent year over year, almost the same growth rate it experienced from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015.

Last quarter’s growth slowdown may just be a one-quarter thing. But it was the smallest quarter-over-quarter jump in users for Snapchat in the past three years, which means it will be worth watching moving forward.

We’ve said this before but we’ll say it again: Twitter has shown us what happens when user growth becomes a looming problem.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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