For Snapchat, which specializes in the trafficking of vanishing images, women have materialized as its core user base.
About 70 percent of the photo-sharing app's users are women, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said during a closed-door Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday, according to a Wall Street Journal account of the meeting. Spiegel also told attendees that users of his startup's app are now sending 400 million "snaps" a day on the send-it-and-forget-it photo and video messaging service, which deletes content after a few seconds.
The 23-year-old chief executive also said that half of Snapchat's users have tried out "Stories," a feature introduced last month that extends the lifespan of sent images and videos to 24 hours.
The Venice, Calif.-based startup, which doesn't disclose the size of its user base, recently rebuffed a $3 billion cash offer from Facebook. However, Snapchat currently has no revenue but is in no hurry to tap advertising.
"There are a lot of things in our product that make it appealing for advertisers, but we want to do it right," Spiegel reportedly told attendees at the Las Vegas confab.
Snapchat has captured the attention of tweens and teens, a crowd that's reportedly fleeing Facebook. The app is also estimated to be used by 9 percent of adult cell phone owners in the US, according to research conducted by Pew.
Despite its lack of revenue, the 2-year-old company is said to be in search of hundreds of millions of dollars and a valuation as high as $3.6 billion.