Snap said time spent watching its original shows had doubled in recent months compared to a year earlier. To compare, Twitter had about 166 million. Snap said in April that daily active users had grown more rapidly than expected, reaching 229 million people. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul behind Quibi, blamed the coronavirus pandemic for its rough start, but people have been spending more time on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, an app for making and sharing short videos, since the shutdowns began. Quibi fell out of the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States a week after it went live.
Snapchat’s reassertion of itself in entertainment and news comes as one would-be competitor, Quibi, an app offering short-form shows designed for viewing on phones, attempts to regroup after a disastrous arrival in April. Maggie Suniewick, president of NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises, said in an email that Snapchat was “a brand-safe environment where we can reach millions of new viewers.”
Snap, which makes the ephemeral-messaging app, unveiled the multiyear deals on Thursday, along with a spate of original series and a breaking news feature called “Happening Now” that counts The Washington Post, Bloomberg and ESPN as partners. LOS ANGELES - Disney, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League are expanding deals to supply Snapchat with customized short-form content, underscoring the platform’s renewed momentum.