Jeddah — Saudis are among the highest active daily users of Snapchat, a multimedia messaging app.

According to Snapchat, there are 9 million active daily users ,55% of them women, out of Saudi Arabia’s 32 million population, an increase of almost 30 percent from 2017.

Residents of Riyadh and Jeddah used the camera, on average, 40 times a day while spending 35 minutes a day surfing snaps compared with Snapchat’s global average of 25 times a day and half an hour.

An independent firm also conducted a survey of 16 countries and found out that more than a third of Saudis say they use Snapchat video, making it the highest market adoption of Snapchat by any major nation.

Snapchat is reportedly in talks to open a new branch in Saudi Arabia.

After a year of the application’s opening in the Middle East, Snap reported a growth rate of five percent.

According to the daily digital magazine Ozymandias, Snap is preferred because it makes people feel safe by deleting all opened snaps and unopened ones within a month.

Saudi Arabia has 25 million users of social networking sites. Last year’s growth rate was only 32% (the first in the world). This is a significant figure, adding that Saudi users spend a minimum of two hours and 34 minutes per day on social networking sites.

In 2017, only 1 trillion images were captured through the Snapchat camera, and the total number of “snaps” in the world exceeded 7 years, while the number of snap filters reached 3 billion filters. — SG