Facebook Reportedly Tried To Acquire Asian Snapchat Clone Snow

It appears Facebook is looking to acquire an app very similar to Snapchat. The social networking giant reportedly tried to acquire Snow, a Snapchat-like service built by Naver, the Korean firm behind chat app Line, a source told TechCrunch.

According to the source, Snow has close to 80 million downloads and is getting around 10 million more downloads each month.

The Snow app gained a ton of attention in the summer when it became one of the top iOS and Android apps in Korea, Japan and China, getting more than 30 million downloads.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Naver Have-Hin Lee over the phone with an offer to acquire Snow. Naver believes Snow can be successful without the help from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tech Crunch reports.

While Snow is labeled as a Snapchat clone, the app does offer different features.

Snow is working with celebrities in Korea, where it sees potential, to feature their stories inside the popular app. This encourages users to use the app for more reasons than messaging their friends.

The Snow app also has 36 filters, which is way more than Snapchat. Users also have the option to add filters to images and videos that include celebrities, cartoons and fairies.

Snapchat - which has been renamed to Snap - is getting ready for an IPO next year that could make the company valued at $25 billion. The latest report says that Snapchat could raise $4 billion from a listing.

Facebook is turning to Snapchat-like apps for inspiration. Instagram Stories, which was a feature inspired by Snapchat, reached 100 million users in two months. In addition, the Facebook app has a selfies-filter and images that fade away after 24 hours.