Introduction
If there is a social media platform that has become very popular in recent times other than Instagram it is definitely Snapchat. Snapchat is undoubtedly one of the most popular social media platforms in the world today. This social media platform is one of the newest social networking applications that people liked very much. It has not been ten years since its release and Snapchat is already making waves in the industry. People of all age groups seem to like this product especially youngsters. About 45% of all of its users are people who are between the age of 18 to 24. If you still don’t know what Snapchat is then you are living in a bubble.
But hey it’s never late to find out something new. For those of you who don’t know what Snapchat is, it is a video and photo messaging application. Using this application you cSnapchatan share an image or short video to all your friends. The interesting part about Snapchat is anything you post only lasts for 24 hours after that the images and videos are automatically deleted. Not only that but it also notifies you if someone takes a screenshot of your photos. This is great because your image cannot be degraded in any manner as you would know who to press charges against if you see them on the internet. People can be held accountable for their actions if they use the images you posted on Snapchat without your permission. This feature is very helpful for women especially female celebrities whose images are often morphed.
But do you know who owns Snapchat? When was the application launched? How did it emerge victorious from tough times? This article is all about that, let’s dive into it.
Who owns Snapchat?
First of all, Snapchat is not a company on its own. It is one of the products of a company called Snap inc. Snap Inc which is the parent company of Snapchat has two more products they are Bitmoji and Spectacles. This company was founded by Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy on September 16, 2011. Initially, the company was named Snapchat Inc but it changed to Snap Inc in 2016. They did this to include the product Spectacles under its name. 95% of the voting power of the company is owned by the co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. Bobby Murphy owns 47% and Evan Spiegel owns 48% of the voting power.
Even the majority of shares of Snapchat are owned by these co-founders. Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy both own 18% each out of all the shares of the compy. By looking at these shares one can know the company is owned by these two co-founders. Evan Spiegel is not only the co-founder of Snapchat but also the current CEO of the pathbreaking social media platform.
It is Evan Spiegel you see on all of the things related to Snapchat. While Evan Spiegel enjoys all the spotlight because of Snapchat Bobby Murphy likes to keep a low profile. Nonetheless, he was listed on Time as one of the most influential people in the world in 2014. All of the co-founders of the company know each other since they were students at Stanford University. Most of the stories of the entrepreneurs are the stories of rags to riches but Evan Spiegel’s is not one of them. The CEO of Snapchat was doing very well even before the success of his social media venture.
History of Snapchat
The company was founded after all three co-founders met at Stanford University. All of them met when they joined a fraternity called Kappa Sigma. But Snapchat was not their first venture. Before Snapchat, they worked on a startup that was supposed to help students apply for universities. They dropped the idea of working on it further as the startup failed. It was in 2011 when one of the co-founders Reggie Brown proposed the idea of making an application that would have disappearing images. After they decided to go forward with the idea they roped in another member Bobby Murphy. Evan Spiegel had business experience and Bobby Murphy had the experience in coding which was enough for developing the project. All three of them worked together for several months and launched an application for iOS operating called “Picaboo”.
Due to differences between other co-founders Reggie Brown was ousted from the company. The application was renamed as Snapchat when it was relaunched in September of 2011. After which the company decided to focus more on the technical aspects instead of branding its product. The company started seeing growth after that. Nearly 25 images were being sent on Snapchat every second in 2012. The application was released for Android users on October 29 in 2012. Till November of the same year, the users of Snapchat had already shared more than a billion photos on the social media platform. But the application faced some difficulties when it couldn’t “snaps” or images in real-time. Evan Spiegel addressed this issue and said that it was due to problems in the scalability of the user base. But this was not an issue as Snapchat was going to face a real challenge in the future.
Challenging times
Many of the current users do not know that Snapchat was hacked back in 2013. It was in August of 2013 when Gibson security a security firm from Australia pointed out the vulnerabilities to Snapchat. After that Snapchat announced that it has fixed all the issues that the application had. But to everyone’s surprise, a group of anonymous hackers hacked Snapchat. The anonymous hacker group stated that the fixes were only minor obstacles which meant that the app was not still secure. After stating this the group revealed details of 4.5 million users and their phone numbers on a website called SnapchatDB.info. Snapchat had to apologize to its users after that incident.
The second time faced difficulty was after it made its IPO. This IPO was successful as the company was valued at $28 billion. Even though it had a successful the price shares were declining. The lowest price they witnessed for their shares was on August 11 of 2017 when the shares were being traded at $11.83. But despite all these difficulties the company managed to bounce back and become the application we know today.
Conclusion
Snapchat is quite different from all the other social media platforms out there. You post stories that will disappear in 24 hours. Like any company, Snapchat also had its fair share of controversy but it was successful in tacking them. Today Snapchat is being used by more than 210 million users across the globe. Thanks to the success of Snapchat both Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy were listed as one of the youngest billionaires at one point in time.
