Facebook Fails To Acquire Snow, Asian Snapchat-Like Service

The social giant unsuccessfully made a bid to purchase Snow, a similar service to social platform Snapchat, from Korean firm Naver.

A source close to the company told TechCrunch that Facebook attempted to acquire the ‘Asian Snapchat’ service earlier this summer. The company behind Snow, the $25 billion-valued firm Naver, also owns chat app Line.

With nearly 80 million downloads and about 10 million more being added each month, it’s no surprise that ‘Asian Snapchat’ Snow has attracted a great deal of global attention. According to TechCrunch, the service has also received acquisition interest from Tencent, Alibaba and others.

“It’s true that Snow is receiving love calls from various companies,” a representative from Naver told TechCrunch in a statement regarding the so-called ‘Asian Snapchat.’

Snapchat has reportedly had a lack of interest in the Asian market, but Snow and Naver have found a great deal of success filling that gap. Though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out to Naver Chairman Hae-Jin Lee with an offer for the service, it’s believe that Lee rejected the offer because Snow has the potential for similar IPO success as Line.

Earlier this year, Line raised over $1 billion in a dual Japan-U.S. IPO.

But Snapchat could be on the road to its own massive IPO success story.

The company is reportedly aiming to raise as much as $4 billion, which could give Snapchat a valuation of $25 billion–$35 billion. A final decision in terms of the size of the IPO has not been made as of yet, Bloomberg reported.

Bloomberg noted the valuation could go as high as $40 billion. Snapchat, which changed its name to Snap Inc., is gearing up to launch its IPO in the first quarter of 2017. Its IPO filing will be filed confidentially with the SEC because it has revenue of less than $1 billion, Bloomberg noted.