Snap is popping after a report of huge engagement growth (SNAP)

Snap Maps

Snap is up 1.17% to $14.65 on Friday morning after a report from Axios said the company's user engagement numbers jumped recently.

Snapchat has seen a 40% growth in its Stories engagement since launching its Snap Maps feature, according to the Axios report by Sara Fischer. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said he sees this as a step towards competing with the social messaging app's giant rivals Facebook and Instagram.

Snap Maps was introduced earlier this year and allows users to see their friends' locations on a map. Users can then tap on a location to see Snapchats from users in that area. The feature is one of the biggest innovations from the company recently, and in addition to driving more engagement, the feature is expected to enable new location-based advertisements on the platform.

In addition to the engagement growth, Snap expects more than a trillion Snaps to be sent this year, or about 3 billion a day. The company also claims that active users open the app about 20 times a day. Snap's users are also engaging heavily with the new augmented reality features in the app. More than a third of daily active users interact with the AR features, according to Axios.

Snap has had trouble competing against the marketing prowess and copy-cat nature of its main rival, Instagram. Instagram famously copied Snap's Stories features and has surpassed Snap in the number of daily Stories users since then.

Snap is still 13.6% lower than its IPO price of $17.