*By Amanda Weston* After an unpopular redesign earlier this year, Snapchat's popularity among teens is slipping. "It's surprising," Brian Deagon, senior reporter at Investor's Business Daily, told Cheddar Tuesday. "When Snapchat came onto the scene they were super cool, super hip. Mark Zuckerberg in the early days wanted to buy them for $3 billion. They turned it down, he said. "But we've had since then a series of blunders that they've had a very hard time recovering from." Among the blunders was a high-profile scuffle with Rihanna, who [spoke out against an ad](https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15/entertainment/rihanna-snapchat/index.html) that appeared to mock her experience with domestic violence. "She left and brought millions of users over with \[her\]," Deagon said. "So they're going to have to get those people back and it's going to be difficult for them to do. We'll have to see how they do it." A Piper Jaffray survey [reported](https://www.investors.com/news/technology/snapchat-instagram-teen-survey/) 85 percent of teens use the Facebook-owned ($FB) Instagram monthly, compared to Snapchat ($SNAP) at 84 percent in the Fall of 2018. A [Spring 2018 survey](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/22/instagram-ahead-of-snapchat-in-popularity-among-teens-piper-jaffray.html) ranked Snapchat at 83 percent and Instagram at 82 percent. Deagon said that Instagram's success is actually due, in part, to following its rival's lead. He said Instagram has been copying Snapchat's popular features and making them its own, hurting Snap. Facebook now owns Instagram, which Deagon said is "extremely fortunate," given Facebook's privacy snafus. "They're being plagued by scandals and misinformation and data security issues," Deagon said. "So they've got their hands full on that. "I would also point out that the two founders of Instagram recently left Facebook. We never got real clarity on why they did, but you don't leave something that's going well. So we don't know whether or not Instagram is having its difficulties." But Deagon said Snapchat is not completely out of the running yet; while Instagram has the momentum as of now, Snapchat is "more exciting" and has "more stuff" coming. For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/instagram-overtakes-snapchat-in-teen-popularity).
