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Snapchat

Snapchat

Net Worth

$35,000,000,000

Started in (City)

Santa Monica

Started in (Country)

United States of America

Incorporation Date

16th December, 2011

Bankruptcy Date

-

Founders

  • Evan Spiegel
  • Bobby Murphy
  • Reggie Brown

About

Snapchat is a social media messaging app founded by Evan Spiegel in Santa Monica, California. The main feature of Snapchat is that the pictures, videos and messages shared among Snapchat users can be viewed only for a set time before it disappears and becomes inaccessible. The application has constantly changed throughout the years, with new features such as Stories, Geofilters, Discover, My Eyes Only and other additional features being added everyday leading to the widespread success the app enjoys amongst its young userbase.

Beginning

Snapchat was founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy, all students at Stanford University. Brown came up with the idea of a social media app that enabled users to post photos and videos that disappeared from the site after a few moments. “I wish I could send disappearing photos,” he mused, almost absentmindedly. He approached Spiegel with the idea, and both agreed that the creation of a social media platform modeled on disappearing content was a good idea.

Road to Success

The founders agreed to split the company 50/50, vote on everything, and divide equally any losses or gains they might see. Since Evan had more experience from running Future Freshman and other projects, he was appointed the CEO of Snapchat. Reggie was appointed as the chief marketing officer but neither knew how to code well enough to make the app. They started a list of other fraternity students who had taken computer science courses to help them code the app.. The duo then approached Bobby Murphy to write the code used to build the app as both of them were not experts in coding. Thus Bobby became one of the co-founders of Snapchat. In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Spiegel stated that he believed that the real reason Snapchat was such a hit with younger social media users was the fact that – they did not want their social media history coming back to haunt them. In 2015, Snapchat introduced a variety of filters which users could add to their pictures and videos. This is thought to have contributed to the increase in popularity for the app. As of 2016, there are over 7 billion pictures and videos which are viewed every single day by Snapchat users. This amount increased from 2 billion in May 2015. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, first offered a billion dollars for Snapchat, but when he was declined, he came back with a $3 billion offer. Rejected once again, he returned the next day, promising a check for $4 billion. His offer was not accepted. Snapchat has become so popular now that Facebook is the only rival which can beat it. The user count of the app increased significantly when the video feature was introduced exactly one year into its existence. The videos were only 10 seconds long, but the rollout was successful enough to push so-called “snaps” to 50 million per day. In 2013, Snapchat followed up with two new features – “Stories” and “Chat”. The story feature enabled Snapchat users to post a series of snaps that would remain active and viewable for 24 hours. 2014, Chat function was introduced which allowed users to talk to one another in the chat window via a live video chat. Snapchat also introduced “Our Story,” another story function that enabled Snapchat users all over the world to post photos and videos from ballgames, concerts, political rallies and other public events. Later that year, Snapchat introduced Geofilters, which allowed site users to customize their content and post their location at the time of the post. Snapchat introduced a variety of filters which users could add to their pictures and videos. This is thought to have contributed to the increase in popularity for the app.

Challenges

In July, 2011, the co-founders released “Picaboo”, the precursor to Snapchat. Shortly after the launch, Spiegel and Murphy forced Brown out of the company, and relaunched the company as Snapchat in September, 2011. Snapchat has become so popular now that Facebook is the only rival which can beat it. The founders, Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown Poster and Bobby Murphy, had tried 34 projects before coming up with the idea of Snapchat. Their idea was criticized but eventually the attained success. Despite the great commercial success, Snapchat had to face several challenges to reach the place it currently is at. In 2013, Snapchat was hacked by an anonymous group, revealing the personal information of 4.6 million users. The company apologized for the hack and repaired the breach and has not had a major security incident in the ensuing seven years. The largest setback was faced in 2015. Snapchat founder Spiegel was charged with a lawsuit from company staffer Anthony Pompliano, who cited comments made by Spiegel that the company was only interested in expanding into “rich” countries and would prefer to stay away from poorer countries like India. As a result of the lawsuit, Snapchat’s stock shares fell by 1% but the company suffered no lasting damage, with the company saying that the notion of Snapchat limiting itself to higher income countries was “ridiculous.”

Failures

Another setback faced by the company was when Snapchat had to settle with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which had accused the company of exaggerating the process it used to protect user privacy, noting that it could not “guarantee” that user messages “will be deleted in a specific timeframe. Snapchat was not officially charged by the FTC but the company will be monitored over the next 20 years.

Achievements

  • As of December 2020, Snapchat had 265 million daily active users.
  • On an average, more than 4 billion Snaps are sent each day.

Subsidies

  • Snap Inc.

CEOs

  • Evan Spiegel