Snapchat's Crisis: North American Users Flee as AR Glasses Become Last Hope

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Snapchat just weathered a brutal earnings storm that sent its stock plunging 12 percent on February 5 after Q4 2025 results revealed a North American user exodus of 4 million daily actives, despite global DAUs holding at 474 million. Chronicle Journal called it an identity crisis, with weak Q1 2026 guidance of 1.50 to 1.53 billion in revenue missing the 1.55 billion consensus, though revenue hit 1.72 billion, up 10 percent year-over-year, per Snap's investor release and Barchart analysis. CEO Evan Spiegel touted Snapchat+ subscribers surging 71 percent to 24 million as a rare bright spot, driving other revenue up 62 percent, while ad sales climbed 5 percent to 1.48 billion via AI tools and SMB growth, as noted in the earnings call highlights from Investing.com.

Stock drama continued into February 6, with shares down nearly 25 percent for the week at 5.22 before slight rebounds on analyst upgrades from B. Riley and Stifel, Nasdaq reported, amid fears of regulatory hits like Australia's under-16 ban purging teen accounts and looming UK fines. Social Media Today flagged U.S. and EU user declines, pinning hopes on monetizing core markets over raw growth.

Buzz built around AR ambitions: On January 28, Snap spun off its glasses unit into Specs Inc., hiring nearly 100 roles to sharpen focus ahead of a 2026 consumer launch featuring lightweight full-field waveguides and Snap OS 2.0, per Glass Almanac and Immersive Wire. Management sees it as a hail mary against Meta, with Perplexity AI's 400 million partnership supercharging My AI for search ads. MediaPost whispered of Snap Cloud testing and Lens Studio tweaks to boost adoption, though skeptics decry Specs as clunky versus Meta's firepower.

No fresh public sightings of Spiegel or big social mentions popped, but whispers of M&A allure at depressed valuations swirl if TikTok faces bans. Snapchat's pivoting hard to subs and AR survivalits make or break year ahead.

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