Republican pundits have talked quite a bit over the past several days about the high viewership for the first GOP presidential debate held August 6 in Cleveland, Ohio, but the TV viewership among 18-24 year olds comes in second to the number of people who watched the debate via the mobile app Snapchat.
According to data provided to Mike Allen at POLITICO by Snapchat, when compared to viewership numbers from Nielsen, “about twice as many 18-24 year olds watched the debate on Snapchat [via the Live Story] as on TV.” These specifics back up earlier estimates that millions of Snapchat’s users participated in the GOP Debate Live Story, a collection of clips and photos from people in and around the Quicken Loans Arena.
The Live Story began airing two hours before the debate started, and then was summarized into a six-minute story available for 24 hours after the debate.
Snapchat is a booming mobile app that lets users share photos and short videos with friends. The catch is the shared content is temporary and deletes after a few seconds. With about 100 million active users, Snapchat, the product of three Stanford students, currently has a valuation of $16 billion.
Snapchat is unique from other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. So how do you use it?
Check out how the current presidential candidates are leveraging the app — their usernames are below:
- Chris Christie: christie.2016
- Carly Fiorina: carlyforamerica
- Lindsey Graham: LindseyGrahamSC
- Rand Paul: SenatorRandPaul
- Rick Perry: GovernorPerry
- Marco Rubio: marcorubio16
- Scott Walker: govscottwalker
