Snapchat

Snapchat is an American multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. As of March 2020, Snapchat had 229 million daily active users. On average more than 4 billion Snaps are sent each day.

About Snapchat in brief

Summary SnapchatSnapchat is an American multimedia messaging app developed by Snap Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. As of March 2020, Snapchat had 229 million daily active users. On average more than 4 billion Snaps are sent each day. Snapchat is known to be popular among the younger generations, particularly those below the age of 16, leading to many privacy concerns for parents. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to featuring users’ \”Stories\” of 24 hours of chronological content. It also allows users to keep photos in the \”my eyes only\” which lets them keep their photos in a password-protected space. In May 2016, Snapchat raised USD 1 billion in equity offering, suggesting strong interest in the company. By May 31, 2016, the app had almost 10 million active users in the United Kingdom. In February 2017, Snapchat hit 10 billion daily video views, reaching 6 billion by November 2016, reaching 2 billion videos per day. The name is a reference to the ghostly hero from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a character in the play who is ultimately seen to be victorious over evil. In June 2013, Snapchat version 5. 0, dubbed \”Banquo,\” was released for iOS. The updated version introduced several speed and design enhancements, including swipe navigation, double-tap to reply, an improved friend finder, and in-app profiles.

Snapkidz was part of the original Snapchat application and was activated when the user provided his date of birth to verify his age. In September 2014, Snapchat introduced Snap Kidz, which allowed users under 13 years of age to take snaps and draw on them, but they could not send them to other users and could only save them locally on the device being used to save the snaps. The Snapchat app was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University. According to documents and deposition statements, Reggie Brown brought the idea for a disappearing pictures application to Evan Spiegel because Spiegel had prior business experience. He presented Snapchat as the solution to stresses caused by the longevity of personal information on social media, evidenced by photoshopping blemishes out of candid shots before they hit the internet. In their first blog post, dated May 9, 2012, CEO Evan Spiegel described the company’s mission: ‘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.’ In May 2012, Spiegel cited problems with user base scalability as the reason why Snapchat was experiencing some difficulties delivering its images, known as ‘snaps,’ in real time. In November 2012, users had shared over one billion photos on the Snapchat iOS app, with 20 million photos being shared per day on the app.