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Snapchat is beating Facebook at its own game

speigel versus zuck
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are in a battle over the future of social media. Illustration adapted from Bruce Turner / Flickr

Here's a big number for you: 10 billion.

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That's how many videos are viewed on Snapchat every day, as first reported by Bloomberg on Thursday. Snapchat confirmed the number to Tech Insider. That's up from 8 billion videos viewed per day just two months ago. 

What's perhaps most impressive about Snapchat is that over a third of its more than 100 million daily active users create "stories" in the app, which are stitched together collections of photos and videos others can view. All of these stories expire 24 hours after they're created.

Meanwhile, multiple outlets have reported that Facebook is battling a decline in "original sharing." Facebook doesn't reveal the mix of content that people share on its social network, but the reports say that sharing from personal accounts — think: status updates, photos, notes, etc. — is down.

Let me be clear: Facebook is going to be completely fine.

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It added 60 million new people to its service (over half of Snapchat's entire user base) just last quarter, and has 1.65 billion people using it at least once a month. Facebook is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, has ambitions to become an internet provider, currently possesses an all-star bench of employee talent, and just hired the former head of DARPA.

But make no mistake, Snapchat is Facebook's biggest threat right now. Here's why:

Snapchat's meteoric rise cuts to the heart of what Facebook cares about most: sharing.

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Facebook became the behemoth it is today because we willingly shared our interests, opinions, and lives with it every day. People may use Facebook more than ever to read the news, plan events, and watch video, but Snapchat capitalizes on the creative, expressive feeling Facebook lacks.

Back in 2013, Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat for around $3 billion in cash. Snapchat didn't sell, and that's got to sting for Zuckerberg every time Snapchat moves ahead of Facebook on the App Store's charts.

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