If one thing is for certain, social media apps have gone full speed ahead with no intention of slowing down. A desktop or laptop is no longer needed to update your Facebook (News - Alert) status, send the latest Tweet or even take a snapshot of your #ootd (outfit of the day) and upload it to Instagram.

These social outlets aside, there is one that has everyone going wild – Snapchat.  This is an app that allows users to send snaps (short video or picture clips) to their friends. The use of this picture-sharing social media site seems to not be just a phase. The pictures are no longer viewable after a short countdown, and believe me most snaps I receive don’t need any more time to be viewed – they are overwhelmingly hilarious. It is a nice way for me and my friends to have a lighthearted photo conversation, no matter the time of day or situation.

A Snapchat representative revealed last Tuesday that Snapchat processes 400 million snaps per day. Compared to Facebook users uploading around 350 million photos per day, Snapchat seems to have the upper hand in the photo sharing realm. Although of the 400 million snaps, 88 percent were sent to one single recipient by a Snapchat member - and Facebook’s member base skyrockets over Snapchat users, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel revealed in September that Snapchat was seeing 350 million snaps per day, up from the 200 million recorded in June.

Those soaring figures seem to make Facebook’s argument about user numbers irrelevant. Snapchat users continually send snaps – and they seem to like it. The snaps don’t lie.

As newer apps appear and older apps begin to evolve, users are continually looking for the next best thing in social networking. Take for example, this recent article on TMCnet talks about the Santa Spy Cam app that has come out just for Christmas. This app allows the user to use real images to create a realistic, Christmas video scene of Santa within your home – just when we thought we have seen it all.  There is certainly an app for pretty much anything, but users seem to be getting their photo sharing fix from Snapchat (for now). The advancement of the app is so sudden, who knows what the future could bring.

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Edited by Stefania Viscusi