Snapchat can finally lay claim to rivaling fellow social network Facebook, at least in terms of video viewing figures.
The latest numbers being reported reveal that Snapchat users now watch 7 billion video clips every day. That’s 5 billion extra daily video views in less than a year, and a billion more than the figure reported in November 2015.
The spike sees the app inch closer to social media behemoth Facebook, which laid claim to 8 billion daily video views in November of last year. It’s a miraculous achievement when you consider that Facebook’s approximate user base of 1 billion members is roughly 10 times larger than Snapchat’s 100 million users. The latter, however, has the advantage of being built on visual media, and little else.
The milestone is rendered yet more impressive when comparing the ways the two services tally video views. Although Facebook attributes a view to any video that auto-plays in a user’s stream for more than three seconds, Snapchat requires its users to be more proactive by clicking to open a video.
Snapchat’s new record has been attributed in part to the visual messaging app’s Stories feature. The tool introduced in 2013 and expanded last year allows users to correlate video clips that are then available to others for a period of 24 hours.
Although Snapchat hasn’t officially confirmed the numbers, it will certainly be pleased with itself. Video views are reportedly seen as the holy grail for online services such as Google’s YouTube, and Facebook. As each company chases more advertising revenue, laying claim to blockbuster viewership numbers can act as an attractive bidding tool. With a recent report claiming that Snapchat is working on advertising technology to make it easier for brands to cater their ads toward its service, the news could not come at a better time for the platform.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?