A two-year-old social media company has turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook, despite making no income from normal business.

Snapchat, which has been dubbed a next generation messaging service, is just two years old and was started by 23-year-old Evan Spiegel and friends.

The co-founder of the company has reportedly turned down the huge all-cash offer, which would have valued Snapchat $4 billion – but the firm is said to be being wooed by other investors and possible buyers.

Sources close to the company told The Wall Street Journal that Mr Spiegel, who dropped out of Stanford University, is hoping for a better offer.

While California-based Snapchat has no sales or business model, its smartphone app delivers millions of messages that disappear in less than 10 seconds, making it a truly instant service, instead of a more permanent record collector like Twitter or Facebook.

Snapchat, which has been dubbed a next generation messaging service, is just two years old and was started by 23-year-old Evan Spiegel (left) and Bobby Murphy (right)

According to sources, Mr Spiegel thinks the app’s user numbers have lots of potential to grow and just two months ago, the company’s usage had reportedly risen dramatically to 350 million messages a day, from 200 million in June.

However, the company does not disclose its numbers and has not commented on the rumours.

The offer comes one week after Twitter, another popular but unprofitable messaging service, realised a market value of approximately $25 billion after its IPO and image sharing app Pinterest raised $225 million from investors who valued the company at a huge $3.8 billion.

Snapchat joins an exclusive club of tech start-ups which have snubbed multibillion dollar buyout offers.

Groupon turned down an offer from Google of almost $6 billion in 2010 and Facebook and Twitter have both turned down offers over the years, deciding to grow their businesses organically instead.

Shervin Pishevar, an entrepreneur co-founder of venture-capital firm Sherpa Ventures, said: ‘There is no shame in getting an Instagram result, but there is tremendous glory in building a stand-alone multibillion-dollar company.’

Facebook snapped up photographic app Instagram for almost $1 billion, just two years after it was founded.

Snapchat has carved a niche in the crowded social media marketplace as its messages disappear after 10 seconds and is popular among 13 to 25-year-olds – a group that is increasingly less engaged with more established networks.

Facebook admitted that while it is making more money via mobile advertising, fewer young teenagers are using its site regularly to chat to friends.
The social networt reportedly tried to acquire Snapchat last year for $1 billion but raised its offer to $3 billion, which, if it was accepted, would be Facebook’s largest acquisition to date.

While it is expected that Snapchat will receive more buyout and investment offers due to its popularity, experts are unsure how the service will make money, but think that one option might be to help marketing companies create messages that speak to its young users.

Julie Ask, principal analyst at Forrester Research believes this could include more personalised narrative content instead of banner adverts.

‘If you can create content, whether it is a photo or a video or a story, and get it onto one of these instant messaging apps, it has the potential to go viral so fast because the community of users is so big,’ she said.

While the app might have the potential to generate revenue from advertising, some analysts believe Snapchat runs the risk of becoming one of many similar services.

Benedict Evans, an analyst at Enders Analysis, predicts similar young apps will flood the market as more and more people use smartphones.

‘There are going to be a dozen companies that look something like this, and Facebook can't buy them all,’ he said.

WHAT IS SNAPCHAT?

Snapchat is a photo messaging app for iOS and Android devices, developed by Stanford University students.

Using the app, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings and send them to a controlled list of recipients.

These sent photographs and videos are known as 'Snaps'.

Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (from one to 10 seconds) after which they will be hidden from the recipient's device and deleted from the Snapchat server.

The social app is currently delivering more than 350 million photos every day.

Snapchat hasn't made any money yet as it doesn't sell adverts or charge people to download or use its app, but

it has attracted a lot of investment.

It has just added Snapchat stories, which lets users link photos and videos together, where they exist for 24 hours.

The app has come under fire from people worried about sexting and cyber bullying.

【新聞快訊】

據(jù)國外媒體報道，valleywag網(wǎng)站從消息人士處獲悉了與閱后即焚應(yīng)用Snapchat有關(guān)的收購邀約故事，即最先是騰訊向Snapchat提出收購邀約被拒絕，隨后Facebook和谷歌提出更高價格的邀約，也遭到拒絕。

消息人士透露，最開始，騰訊公司向Snapchat開出了一份價值30億美元至40億美元的收購邀約，但后者的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼CEO伊萬·斯佩格爾(Evan Spiegel)嫌價格太低，拒絕了騰訊。

值得一提的是，10月30日，AllThingsD網(wǎng)站從消息人士處獲悉，Snapchat即將完成新一輪最高達(dá)2億美元的融資，騰訊公司也參與投資，但數(shù)目不詳。新一輪融資將Snapchat的估計(jì)推高至36億至40億美元。

有猜測稱，可能是騰訊開出收購邀約被拒后，才選擇戰(zhàn)略投資Snapchat的。valleywag消息人士稱，正是聽說斯佩格爾因?yàn)轵v訊出價不夠高而拒絕出售公司后，谷歌才知道原來斯佩格爾有意出售Snapchat。

Snapchat也再次拒絕了Facebook提出的30億美元的全現(xiàn)金收購要約。valleywag的消息人士稱，F(xiàn)acebook提出的收購價格其實(shí)是35億美元（其中包括5億美元基于盈利狀況的風(fēng)險收益款）。

之后的故事是這樣，斯佩格爾“拿著Facebook的收購邀約單”找到了谷歌，谷歌在研究后給出了40億美元的收購方案。不過最終，斯皮格爾選擇了繼續(xù)等待，并籌備明年進(jìn)行新一輪的募資。

Snapchat之所以被稱為閱后即焚應(yīng)用，是因?yàn)橛脩粼诜窒碚掌瑫r可以設(shè)置分享內(nèi)容的“壽命”時長，如5秒、10秒后，“壽命”時長一到，被分享的照片將徹底消失。這種獨(dú)特的分享方式深受年輕用戶喜愛，因?yàn)樗麄兿矚g偶爾“放縱一下”，發(fā)布一些“重口味”的內(nèi)容。

今年6月，Snapchat完成了6000萬美元的融資，投資者包括風(fēng)投公司Institutional Venture Partners，這輪融資對Snapchat的估值為8億美元。

9月份，Snapchat宣布日均“Snap（照片和視頻信息）”發(fā)送量已經(jīng)達(dá)到3.5億條，比6月份的2億條接近翻了一番。