Snap’s leaked internal metrics show why it had to redesign

Most people ignore marquee features inside of Snapchat and use the app primarily for chatting and exchanging photos with friends, according to leaked internal metrics published today by The Daily Beast.

Snap Maps, a prominent new feature in the app that lets you share your location with friends and view their Bitmoji on a map, had more than 30 million daily users at its launch in June. Usage tends to spike on Saturdays, suggesting that people are using the feature as Snap intended: to see what’s happening around them and meet up with friends during their free time.

But usage of the maps declined to 19 million users in September, according to The Daily Beast, or about 11 percent of Snap’s 178 million daily users. That could be one reason Snap plans to make maps more prominent in its redesign, highlighting items from the map in the new Discover section.

Currently, though, the section of the app reserved for publisher content is ignored by most users. Discover, which hosts daily programming from the Daily Mail, Vulture, and The New York Times, among others, topped out at 38 million daily users in the data obtained by the Daily Beast. The data, which covered the period from April to September, suggest that only 21 percent of users view Discover daily.

Snap declined to comment on the report.

More heartening for Snap is data showing that users sent an average of 34 messages a day — an impressive number that suggests the company has succeeded in developing a loyal core audience. The number of users sending snaps daily has also increased over time, reflecting growing use of the Snapchat camera to send messages and post public stories.

The data obtained by The Daily Beast offer a rare look inside Snap’s effort to build a lasting business around its core chat function. It is not the first company to learn that messaging apps generate loyalty, but not necessarily revenue. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that efforts to monetize Facebook Messenger through advertising had gone slower than expected.

The data also illustrate some of the reasoning behind Snap’s redesign, which has rolled out to a very small percentage of users after being announced in November. Bringing friends’ stories and snaps into the same place for the first time could expand the amount of advertising Snap is able to deliver in the core messaging section of the app. And putting maps into the Discover section, which will also feature individual creators as well as big publishers for the first time, could give people another reason to check it out. (They’ll see ads there, as well.)

In the meantime, more metrics are now public. The Daily Beast published data for other features inside Snapchat as well, including usage of Memories, geofilters, lenses, and audio. It also obtained a geographic breakdown of the user base, it said.