Snapchat is an American messaging app that lets you send photos, videos, and texts to your friends. Snapchat is one of the most successful social media platforms with approximately 347.5 million users worldwide within a decade of its release. This application is popular among youngsters.
The initial version of Snapchat was launched on July 8, 2011, with the former name “Picaboo.” The developers wanted to create an app that deletes the sent photos immediately once viewed; protecting users’ privacy. With that aim, the Snapchat prototype was primarily made available on the iOS app stores. Once the developers improvised the framework, Snapchat was launched in the Android Playstore on October 29, 2012.
What Is Snapchat?
Snapchat is a photo-sharing, instant messaging multimedia app that allows its users to send pictures or videos to their friends. The snap sent is deleted by default within a few seconds once it is viewed. It is a free app available on your Android Playstore as well as iOS Appstore. Snapchat is available in 37 different languages.
What makes Snapchat different from other apps is its “Delete After Viewing” feature. Your snaps disappear immediately once your friends view them. If any app is similar to real life, it’s Snapchat; the moments disappear, and only the memories last.
When Did Snapchat Come out?
Most of you may not know this, but Snapchat was launched first in the iOS operating system as “Picaboo” on July 8, 2011. Later, in September 2011, the app was relaunched as “Snapchat.” Snapchat has made remarkable progress in the social media platform though it has not been a decade since its launching.
Who Developed Snapchat?
Snapchat was created by 3 Stanford senior students, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.
By some digging, we found out that it was Regie Brown’s idea of building an app with disappearing messages. He talked about this concept to his friend Evan Spiegel, who was known to have a business prior. They explained this concept to their friend, Bobby Murphy, who was good at coding. This way, the original authors of Snapchat were brought together.
The app was developed by Snapchat Inc. (now Snap Inc), which looks and maintains Snapchat, Bitmojis, and Spectacles.
History Of Snapchat
The success of Snapchat was not achieved overnight. Snapchat has come a long way facing several ups and downs. The developers have invested a lot to create the beast that Snapchat is now.
The history of Snapchat can be divided into several years in a timeline. Below is the outline of Snapchat’s history.
2011: Initial Versions(Picaboo) Were Launched
Snapchat was first released on the 4th of July, 2011, as “Picaboo” on the iOS.
The app had to change its name because it was issued to Copyright as a company had already registered the name “Picaboo” as theirs.
2012: Snapchat On Android Playstore, Video Launching, And Monetization
In 2012, one of Snapchat’s original authors, Evan Spiegel, wrote an official blog post about his app, Snapchat, and its offerings to the users.
“We’re building a photo app that doesn’t conform to unrealistic notions of beauty or perfection but rather creates a space to be funny, honest, or whatever else you might feel like at the moment you take and share a Snap,”
Spiegel on his blog
Once the prototype of Snapchat was launched, the developers realized that there is no point in creating a “Disappearing message” feature if they could be screenshotted. They wanted to create something more realistic, something lively. So, the trio worked on fixing this problem and came up with the idea of notifying the sender if the viewer screenshots the snaps.
On October 29, 2012, the updated version of Snapchat was made available on the Android Playstore.
Snapchat launched “Video-Sharing” through snaps on December 14, 2012.
Another remarkable change brought on Snapchat in the year 2012 was Monetization. A preliminary version of Monetization was introduced.
2013: “Stories” Was Launched, Snapchat Was Hacked.
Reginal Brown, a colleague of Spiegel and Murphy filed up a case against Snapchat, claiming he came up with the idea of the Snapchat feature of “Disappearing Messages” and “Ghost Logo.” Brown’s contribution to Snapchat was appreciated by the law that provided him ⅓ of the ownership, making him one of the developers of Snapchat.
In October 2013, Snapchat launched a new feature called “Stories,” which allowed a Snapchat user to post a snap that can be viewed by the other users an unlimited number of times for 24 hours. Several companies used this feature of Snapchat in advertising their services to the people.
On December 27, 2013, a security bug was reported on Snapchat’s “Find Friends” option that leaked information of 4.6 million users.
Team Snapchat worked on it and fixed the problem by introducing a new security system.
2014: Video Calls, Geofilters, Live, And Chats
In order to fix the flaw spotted in 2013, Snapchat launched “Snap-tchas” on January 21. However, in the year 2014, Snapchat was hacked time and again, sometimes to freeze the user’s phone by sending hell lotta snaps, leaking Snapuser’s pictures, and others to send pictures of fruit smoothies.
2014 was not all bad for Snapchat. You see, Snapchat made tremendous progress by introducing a number of features that made Snapchat more appealing to the users.
The developers launched “Snapchat Geofilters,” an overlay to your pictures that is available to the users in a certain area over a certain period. Snapchat Geofilters are popular among Business Companies and Traders as it became an easy and effective platform where you can advertise your business. Gradually, Snapchat Geofilters started gaining popularity on Personal occasions as well as social events.
Snapchat broadened its messaging feature by introducing “Chats,” allowing its users to exchange the text messages that also disappear once it is viewed, just like the snaps.
Keeping up with the competition, Snapchat introduced “Video Calls” that let Snapchat users make a video call with their Snapchat friends. Users can also apply filters to their video calls.
On August 29, 2014, Snapchat introduced a “Live” feature allowing people to attend live events.
2015: Lenses And Discover
Snapchat introduced “Lenses” on September 16, 2015. It was initially limited to 7 filters only. Snapchat hit 100 million right after “Lenses” was introduced.
Business Companies were using Geofilters to advertise their products and companies. To make business advertising easier, Snapchat introduced a new feature, “Discover,” that displays the ads of different companies on a whole new page.
2016: Snapstreaks, Stickers, And Memories
In the year of 2016, Snapchat started “Snapstreaks,” the fire emoji that shows up when you and your friend share snaps to each other for three consecutive days or more. Snapstreak became a sort of gaming content on Snapchat as users have to share snaps daily in order to keep the Snapstreaks going.
Snapchat announced “Memories” on July 6, 2016, so that the users can save their snaps and look into them later. In addition, Snapchat brought 200+ “Stickers” to make snapping more fun.
2017: Snap Inc. Went Public, Snapchat Launched Snapmap
Snapchat was owned by its authors till 2017. On 2017 March 2, Snapchat Inc. went public by selling 200 million shares, which was priced at $17 per share. Snapchat had a total of $3.4 billion, out of which $900 million would go to its investors, keeping $2.5 billion for the Snapchat company.
Snapchat launched their own map that allowed users to share their current location with their friends. It was given the name “SnapMap.”
2018: Sudden Drop In Number Of Snapchat Users
In 2018, Snapchat faced a first-ever drop in the number of users by 1.5 percent, from 188 million active users to 191 million users. Despite the shrinkage in the number of users, Snapchat improved its revenue by 44 percent.
2019: Hosted “Snapchat Partner Summit.”
On April 4, 2019, Snapchat hosted the “Snapchat Partner Summit.”
2021: Snapchat On Present
Currently, Snapchat has 347.3 billion users across the world, the total daily users being 221 million. The USA has the highest number of Snapchat users, i.e., 108 million, followed by India with 74.35 million users.
The stock price has increased from $17 to $60.02 with total revenue of 1.716 billion USD (2019).
About 210 million snaps are exchanged on an everyday basis, according to the statistics of 2021.
Snapchat stands in the second place of being the most used social application on mobile. Though it faced some downfall in the number of users back in 2018, Snapchat has bounced back, becoming even stronger.
What Will Be Snapchat’s Next Step?
Since advertising is growing much on social media platforms rather than TV ads, we can expect the tremendous growth of social media apps, especially Snapchat, as it has multiple offerings to the companies. Snapchat Geofilters and Discover have made it easier to advertise the business companies and their products by providing large viewers as well.
There is no probability of Snapchat collapsing in the future. What I think is, in some years, Snapchat is gonna be more than a camera company that serves the field of communication all over the world. Snapchat can be a platform for content creators, advertising, influencers, and so on.
Snapchat Team has tried to increase the number of users and amount of time spent on Snapchat by introducing Snapchat games and YOLO(an anonymous question-answers platform). Let’s see whether this attempt of Snapchat succeeds to increase the number of its user not.
What Can You Do On Snapchat?
Snapchat allows you to send pictures or videos to your friends using different filters, emojis, stickers, etc. In addition to sending snaps, Snapchat offers other services like Video Calls, Calls, Chats, etc.
No matter where you are, you can catch up with your friends using the amazing services that Snapchat offers. Strengthen your friendship bond using Snapchat’s features and get a lively experience with your friends.
Snapchat Features
Snapchat offers varieties of features that provide uniqueness to this app. No wonder why this app is so successful in this less tenure. Snapchat has its own lingo to address its features that may sometimes be chaotic to understand. We have tried to help you by explaining what each lingo on Snapchat means.
Filters And Stickers
If you are a Snapchat user, you certainly have come across the filters. Filters work as the overlays on your pictures, videos that add more fun to your snap.
You obviously have seen your friends creating doggy-like pictures of themselves with those ears and nose stickers on. That, my friend, is the Dog Filter.
Snapchat offers hundreds of such filters to make your snaps look exciting. You can add stickers, lenses, current weather, location, as well as the time over your filter.
Snapchat has 200+ stickers on its store that can make your conversation more lively and fun. You can also create your own bitmojis featuring your avatar.
Emojis and Snapstreaks
Friends emojis and Snapstreaks are the gaming elements of Snapchat that can be achieved by following certain rules.
Snapstreak is achieved when you share snaps with your friends for three days straight. You need to continue sharing snaps to keep the Snapstreak going.
Friends emojis work in a similar way. Snapchat assigns different friends emoji to your Snapchat friends, based on the amount of interaction with each other.
(Note: Only you can see your friends’ emoji.)
Stories
Similar to other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc., Snapchat also lets its user upload a snap as a story. This story can be viewed by other users an unlimited number of times within 24 hours.
You can post the story publically as well as to your friends only.
Snapchat Memories
Snapchat cares for you and your special moments. It allows you to save your snaps to capture your moments that are later stored in chronological order in your Snap Memories roll. You can view your memories at any time. The snaps in your memories can be shared with your friends, saved to your phone, and can be uploaded to your story as well.
Don’t want everyone to view your Snap Memories?
Don’t worry; you can always make them private by moving to a password-protected private folder called “My Eyes Only.”
Snapmap
What’s better than Snapchat? Snapchat with its own map, i.e., Snapmap.
Snapmap allows you to access your friend’s locations worldwide.
You can choose who can access your location. Also, if you wanna be M.I.A. all of a sudden, “Ghost Mode” is to the rescue.
(Quick Note: Your friends can view your location only when you are using the Snapchat app.)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Haven’t got an answer to your question yet? We have tried to include some other questions that might feed your hungry mind.
When Did Snapchat Become Popular?
Snapchat already had 10 million active users within a year of its launching. In 2014, Snapchat introduced Geofilters, which added a huge number of Snapchat users. That’s when Snapchat started getting popular among the young generation.
Are Snaps On Snapchat Saved Forever?
If you are wondering whether Snapchat saves your snaps forever, the answer is No. However, it may take up to 30 days for Snapchat to delete your snaps from the Snapchat server permanently.
Was Snapchat Originally For Sexting?
When Snapchat was first launched, people could only share snaps (pictures) with each other. There were no Chats, and Video Calls feature back then. As any snap sent to friends was deleted by default after some seconds, the privacy was secured, and the trust issues were cleared. People started feeling more secure and safe using this app as the recipient can’t take a screenshot of your snap without letting you know either. So, in the initial days, Snapchat had mostly been used for sexting.
Is My Information Safe On Snapchat?
Snapchat may use your information and data on your device (with your permission). As Snapchat is bound by U.S. law enforcement, it should disclose your information if needed.
However, under normal circumstances, the snaps sent are deleted by end-to-end encryption while the text messages are not.
Conclusion
Snapchat has gained enormous popularity due to its amazing features and the privacy protection of its users. It is one of the fastest-growing social apps. Snapchat is connecting people since 2012 and has billions of users globally.
Whether you want to hide your conversations from your parents or don’t want your friends to screenshot that goofy chat of yours and circulate around the whole uni, Snapchat can always be your go-to app. Create a Snapchat account if you haven’t already and enjoy snapping with your friends.
