Snapchat’s value balloons as it seeks $500M in new funding

Snapchat — the app which lets you send and receive self-destructing photographs and videos — is looking to raise as much as $500 million in a new funding round that would value the mobile messaging company at up to $19 billion. The latest valuation is a massive increase for the company, which Facebook Inc offered to buy for $3 billion in late 2013. Snapchat’s previous funding round, completed late last year, valued the company at more than $10 billion.

Snapchat has graduated from a brilliant concept – an ephemeral messaging app where photos, videos and texts simply evaporate after they’re viewed – into a full-blown social media platform.

Steve Tobak, Fox Business

Snapchat is particularly attractive to advertisers because it has younger users than many other social networks. On Friday, Snapchat branched out from its core service, launching the first UK and Ireland-specific channels for its Discover service. Sky News and Sky Sports now feature on the platform, publishing an edition each afternoon with stories specifically created for the app. At $19 billion, Snapchat would be the third-most valuable tech firm that does not trade its shares publicly.

Business Snapchat $19bn