Snapchat adds 7 million users but revenue falls below expectations

Photo app Snapchat added 7 million new users in the last three months, the company's latest financial results revealed.

However, parent company Snap Inc fell short of analysts' expectations with revenue for the quarter of 181.7 million dollars (£140m), well below the 189 million dollars (£145m) predicted.

Snapchat's daily active users rose to 173 million, compared to the 166 million reported in the last quarter, but continues to trail many of its rivals.

Snap Inc has suffered from falling stock prices since floating on the US stock market earlier this year.

Some of this fall has been driven by pressure from Facebook's family of apps - including Instagram - which have successfully introduced features similar to Snapchat in order to entice users to their services.

Since introducing a Stories feature similar to that of Snapchat, Instagram has seen daily use of the feature rise to more than 250 million, eclipsing Snapchat's entire user base.

Stories enable users to capture and share a montage of photos and videos over a 24-hour period that appear to friends in chronological order.

However, Snapchat's user growth for the quarter was up 21% on the same period last year.

Earlier this year, Snap Inc released its first hardware product in the UK - video camera enabled sunglasses called Spectacles, which the tech giant sells via colourful vending machines called Snapbots.