The History of Snapchat

By: Lucas D'Orazio

Introduction

Let’s take a quick moment to think about our most common channels of communication today. Text, phone calls, DM’s on Instagram or Twitter. There are so many different ways to chat with peers or get to know new people and yet one question seems to trump many others when trying establish a channel of communication, especially among younger generations: “What’s your snap?” So many people turn to the little white ghost with the yellow background to make connections and show their personality to people in a plethora of ways with this ever-growing picture sharing app. But where did this idea and company come from, and how have they been so successful?

History

Snapchat was founded in 2011 by three students from Stanford University: Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy. Brown came to Spiegel with the idea of a social media app with content that would disappear. after a few seconds. Brown and Spiegel then went to Bobby Murphy for help with writing the code for the application. In July of 2011 the three students released a working prototype of the app just before final exams called “Picaboo”. Evan Spiegel went to his former fraternity brothers for them to try out the application and share it with their friends in hopes to grow the app. The fraternity brothers had a good time with this little toy, sending pictures partying, or bored in class, but there was no real explosion of users. Spiegel and Murphy then kicked Brown out of their group after the launch of Picaboo and relaunched in September of 2011 under the new name “Snapchat”. In September, 2014 Brown would settle with Spiegel and Murphy for $157 million dollars and be officially credited with being the cofounder of Snapchat.

In one of Spiegel’s classes for mechanical engineering titled, “Design and Business Factors,” he presented this idea to a panel of venture capitalists. Many people thought, “Why would anyone use this application?” and his teacher even pulled him aside to ask if he’d created a sexting app. In all honesty the lore of snapchat was somewhat based around the same thoughts that people had around an idea like sexting: they didn’t want their social media history to come back to haunt them, as Spiegel said in a 2013 interview with The Telegraph. Another reason, according to Spiegel, Snapchat was so successful was that it is more reflective of a natural conversation in the way things go away and are saved in nothing but our memory. “What Snapchat said was if we try to model conversations as they occur, they’re largely ephemeral. We may try to write down and save the really special moments, but by and large, we just try to let everything go. We remember it but we don’t try to save it.”

Evolving Features

A year after the initial release Snapchat introduced videos as well as photos, with a 10 second limit on these videos. In 2013 Snapchat introduced “stories,” which were public posts to everyone on someone’s friends list that lasted for a full 24 hours before disappearing, and “chat,” which was similar to a DM feature, sending just text that didn’t have to be accompanied by a photo. Over the years we have seen many platforms follow this story feature including, Instagram, Facebook, and most recently Twitter.

In 2014 they introduced live video chat to the chat function, as well as an “Our Story” feature which allowed people to post a story to a collective group story with others from live events, such as sports events, concerts, political rallies, parades or any other social event. 2014 stayed a busy year for the company as they rolled out Geofilters, which were filters or stickers on photos and videos based on your location or what event the user is at. Snapchat allowed people to make these Geofilters for community events, or buy branded filters for their own use. Snapcash, a money transaction feature like Venmo or CashApp emerged this year as well.

In 2016 Snapchat caved in to many people’s requests and introduced a feature to save a photo or video in the “Memories” section as an opportunity to save what a user has captured. Snapchat also brings these memories back up in a notification on the app on the date that a user saved these photos or videos in a way to remember what happened on that date.

Wrap-up

Snapchat hit a huge market with a social media platform with a new twist that was unseen before. Today Snapchat has 108 million users in the United States alone and is worth $74.89 billion. Many people use Snapchat as their primary form of communication with their peers and greatly enjoy the many features and opportunities that Snapchat presents.

Links Used

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat#:~:text=Snapchat%20was%20founded%20in%202011,site%20after%20a%20few%20moments.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/the-birth-of-snapchat/