The History of Snapchat
Snapchat is one of the most used social apps in the world. Snapchat has become one of our main forms of communication in today’s society. There are over 200 million users, on the app. The app was founded by 3 students at Stanford and was launched in 2011. The creators originally named the app “Picaboo” but evidently changed it to Snapchat after they were sent a cease-and-desist since a company trademarked the name already.
The Origin of Snapchat
Snapchat’s purpose originally was to only let users post pictures and videos for a few seconds. They got the idea from being tagged in pictures on Facebook that you do not want to be tagged in. Or using Photoshop on pictures before posting on the internet because when something is posted on the internet, it stays forever. “Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion-not just what appears to be pretty or perfect.” This app was created to be funny and to capture events in the moment.
Building upon the App
After one year of Snapchat, it was clear that it was going to be an app that is around for a while. The creators knew they had to keep updating the app so that it can keep the attention of the audience. After a year, they introduced videos to the app. These videos were only 10 seconds, but it was a change to their original message which was a picture for only a few seconds. In 2013, only 2 years later, they updated it again. In this update, they introduced stories and chat. These new features were also a big change to the original app because with the stories, they are viewable for 24 hours. The purpose of the chat function was to compete with other social media platforms. They continued to update the chat function by adding video chat in 2014. They even went as far as introducing geofilters and community geofilters. In 2015, Snapchat started offering many more features than they already have. In 2015, they had roughly 75 million users, to keep this number growing, they introduced Discover and Lenses. Discover was a clever idea that the creators had because it was a new home screen that featured short content and channels. It had popular channels including BuzzFeed, CNN, and the Food Network. Lenses was when users could choose from a variety of lenses to change what they look like and what the picture looks like.
2016-Now
In the year 2016, Snapchat hit a dramatic change and growth. They started an auto-advancing story player. This is when one story ends, the next one starts. Snapchat hit a milestone in June of 2016 with 150 million daily active users. This is when the creators decided to start adding ads between stories. After hitting this milestone is when they introduced memories. This change was a big change from when Snapchat was released in 2011. With memories, the snaps do not automatically disappear. They then started a collaboration with Bitmoji and are still in this collaboration today. They also introduced group messaging in late 2016. In 2017, Snapchat rebranded to Snap Inc. and then proceeded to change their stories feed to an algorithmic feed. After harsh backlash, they changed their stories back to chronological order. In 2019, Snapchat changed its design and logo. Their goal was to make their logo stand out among the rest of social media. Snapchat today remains one of the biggest social media apps. The app is worth $74.77 billion dollars and continues to change how we communicate with each other.
