Evan Spiegel, founder of Snapchat, turned down Facebook’s acquisition offer worth $3bn (£1.9bn), sources close to the matter have revealed.
If the deal between the two would have taken place, it would have been Facebook’s biggest purchase till date. The social networking giants’ offer valued three times more than the bid it made to acquire Instagram.
Tencent, a Chinese e-commerce company, also showed its interest in leading a funding round for the messaging app that would value Snapchat at $4 billion, cited sources close to the matter reports The Wall Street Journal.
Snapchat’s user base size has doubled owing to its increasing popularity among teenagers. According to research conducted by Pew, around 9 percent of the total adult cell phone users in the US use this app. More than 350 million images, or “snaps” between mobile devices are sent everyday by the app users, confirms the 2 year old messaging firm.
With more than $60m investment raised from investors last June, Snapchat now is valued at more than $800m. Spiegel is not seeing an acquisition or an investment deal until early 2014, reports the Journal.
