Who created Snapchat?
Snapchat was invented by Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. Spiegel is now 24 and with a net worth of $1.5billion is the CEO of Snapchat. Bobby Murphy is the official co-creator and co-owner of snapchat with his net worth matching Spiegel's. Spiegel and Murphy were a part of the same fraternity 'Kappa Sigma' which is how they met. Snapchat was originally introduced as an idea for a class project in Spiegel's design class. The sites name was originally 'Picaboo'. Later on into the project Murphy was brought in to code the application.
When was Snapchat created?
Snapchat was first launched under the name 'Picaboo' in July of 2011 as an iOS application only and it's name later changed to Snapchat. The app really took off in October of 2011 as more people started to realise what the app was created for.
What was the purpose of creating Snapchat?
There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding the purpose of snapchat as many people believe that it was created as an easy way for teenagers to send nude pictures without it hanging around on the internet. Spiegel denies these claims and says that he came up with the idea after thinking about how kids do not often get to be themselves on the internet for fear of their history being traced by future employers and that it is a fun way for friends to send funny pictures to each other (x). This was proven to be the reason that most teenagers were using Snapchat because in October 2011, Murphy and Spiegel noticed that there was a spike of usage between 9am and 3pm which meant that people were using this app as a tool to send notes and messages to their friends during school hours. Despite, in the beginning stages of the app, people thinking that it was all about sexting a lot of adults and young adults are changing their mind of this fact - According to Huffington Post only 1.6 percent of snapchat users have said that they use it to send sexts regularly and the second most popular type of snap to be sent is a selfie with the first being funny content (x).
How Does It Work?
Once this is done, the user can choose who, out of their contacts, they can send the 'snap' to or they can add it to their story which is available for all of their contacts to see for up to 24 hours and then it is wiped. If the user doesn't add the snap to their story then the person who they send it to can view it for up to 10 seconds. A 'replay' option is allowed once every 24 hours so if the snap is set to a quick timer then the user can view it again.
Companies can promote their businesses using Snapchat with make-up company Nars showing previews of their new collection using the stories feature. Snapchat also uses stories to showcase popular events that occur worldwide such as London Fashion Week, The Oscars and other award shows and Festivals such as Coachella. This helps users of Snapchat to interact with the app if they are at the event that is being shown or if they are people who aren't there and just want to see what is going on. The application has recently started using geofilters so that users can show where they are at that moment with Snapchat having stories solely for people in London, Paris, Dubai and New York in the past.
Advertisment:
Snapchat has a YouTube Channel which is the main vessel of videos that promote and advertise Snapchat and it's new features for example: The Geofilters.
These clips showcase the new updates and explain how to properly use them and to show what can usually be seen as a boring list of updates (e.g. ios) in a fun and interesting way that engages their users and sticks to what it is that Snapchat stands for - creativity and having fun.
This is another advert that is promoting Snapchat via the form of a print ad. The advert clearly shows what the application is and where you can download it from but more than that, the advert shows two girls having a good time, taking a funny picture and wanting to share that moment with their friends which is what Snapchat is about. The advert is funny, light-hearted and simple which are three qualities Snapchat carries throughout their branding.
No comments:
Post a Comment