Snapchat isn't just about capturing the typical Kodak moment. It's about expressing all emotions that people experience -- not just what's beautiful or perfect. ."
Snapchat Co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel wrote this in the first blog post in the Snap Inc. -- and later Snapchat blog in 2012 at the time, users could only share pictures, and only to iOS devices. Since Spiegel's blog entry, Snapchat has already had significant influence on the social networks as well as content marketing.
Ephemeralor disappearing messaging has seen a huge increase in the last few years since Snapchat was first introduced. In actual fact, since Snapchat's entry into the social media world, Facebook and Instagram have created their own versions of Snapchat's most well-known features. We've forecast that competition will continue increase between Snapchat and the other social media apps as the apps continue to develop new features to differentiate themselves from one another.
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In this article we'll look at the complete story of Snapchat's evolution from a photo sharing app to an important social media player.
What Is Snapchat?
Snapchat can be described as an individual and group messaging application that allows users to send photos, videos and text messages which disappear after a short period of time. It is estimated that 150 million users use Snapchat each day, and consume about 800 hours worth of videos each second. It's equivalent to watching each episode of "Game of Thrones" 13 times every second.
In addition to the messaging options, Snapchat features Stories (photo or video messages that can be played back for up to 24 hours) and Memories (saved images to share in the future) as well as stickers to enhance messages. Snapchat has been extensively used, especially by teens and Millennials 26% of users polled between 12-24 said that they use Snapchat most often, which is second in line with Facebook.
After we're on the same page we can look into Snapchat's most significant advancements and successes in the past five years, and what we could be expecting from the next five years.
The History of Snapchat
2011. Snapchat and later Picaboo and Picaboo launch
Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy, told Forbes that they had a meeting during their time at Stanford University and created Picaboo the initial version of Snapchat in the spring of 2011. They wanted to design an app that could send photos that would then disappear. The first Picaboo app launched on the iOS App Store in July -- with very minimal fanfare.
This led them to implement an alternate solution to the issue of screenshots users could snap screenshots using their iPhones which renders that disappearing feature of Picaboo's messages ineffective. Instead, they created a notification system that allows users to be able to know whether someone took a photo of their missing photo.
It was in the month of September that Spiegel and Murphy rebranded the app to Snapchat which added the ability to caption photos and then relaunched it on the iOS App Store. They concentrated on Snapchat's technological advances in addition to marketing and branding, to make it more natural and fun as opposed to traditional advertising. If you've been a bit forgetful the first snaps were like back then:
It was in the month of May that Spiegel created the Snapchat's initial blog entry that set the stage for what users can anticipate from the app over the years ahead. "We're creating a photo application that doesn't rely on unrealistic expectations of beauty or perfect, but instead creates a space for you for people to be authentic, humorous, or whatever else you be feeling at the time you snap and share the Snap," he wrote.
This month, Snapchat was available for Android was launched on the Google Play store, which has helped to increase the number of Snapchat users and led to the next major milestone coming in October. After a year of use, Snapchat users were sending 20 million snaps every day, which is about 25 snaps per second.
In the end of December Snapchat users sent fifty million photos every day. In addition, the app released an update with the capability to create and share videos of 10 seconds. The most appealing feature? Instead of switching between two different video recording modes as on camera phones users can hold the button for photo capture to take the video.
2013-2014: Stories and Chat
In October of 2013, Snapchat launched Stories -- an instantaneous story of snaps that users can share for their friends to see for up to 24 hours. Both users and brands started using Stories to give a more complete image of what they had been doing while maintaining the distinctive disappearing element.
This year, Snapchat increased its innovation rate and released a myriad of new features and enhancements. The first was the introduction of the Chat feature in May. It was a messaging app that was still able to disappear messages that were sent by text, as well as the ability to know when you friend appeared "here" within the chat screen. This meant that users could begin the chat in real-time. Then, Our Story was released in June and allowed Snapchat users across the globe the chance to add photos and videos to a feed of public pictures from the most popular events.
Snapchat introduced geofilters in July, letting users personalize their snaps using filters and embellishments based on the city they snapped from.
October was the month that saw the start in the world of Snapchat ads advertisements, and they began appearing in users "Recent updates" section along with all of their friends Stories. Users could choose to not view the ads at any time however, just like other Stories that were removed within 24 hours. This is what their first advertisement for the film "Ouija," looked like:
This November, Snapchat cooperated with Square to develop Snapcash that allows users to send money and receive it directly via Snapchat to banks accounts. Snapchat added another step to this monetization arena when it launched the Community Geofilters on December 14, 2014. Users can make your own geofilters or purchase custom-branded filters for their company or event that they sponsored.
Discover and Lenses
In the beginning of January, Snapchat started offering many different methods for marketers to make profits from its massive audience that was at the time 75 million users. Snapchat launched Discover the new Discover page that was accessible via on the Snapchat home screen. It contained short-form ads with a range of sources and channels, including Vox, BuzzFeed, CNN and Food Network. What it appears like when you use it:
Then, Tap to View was launched. In the past users needed to place their fingers against the screen of their smartphone to view photos, they now needed to tap once to begin watching. The first time in June Snapchat introduced sponsored Geofilters to advertisers looking to purchase brand exposure in any area. This is what McDonald's first filter was like:
Source: Los Angeles Times
The month of September was when Snapchat announced the next biggest thing for those who love selfies: Lenses. The moment users switched their cameras towards themselves with a finger to their face, they could pick from a range of Lenses to alter their appearance. From barfing puppy ears to snoozing rainbows, selfies became much more imaginative. Take a look below:
In December 2015, for the first time The Financial Times reported that Snapchat users were viewing six billion videos a day, just 3 years following the time that video-making made available on the app.
2016, Memories of the Year and Rebranding
The year 2016 was an era of dramatic change and rapid expansion for Snapchat. On February 1, Snapchat introduced Geofilters that are available on demand for all of the Snapchat community that let users create filters for weddings, parties as well as private occasions. Then, Snapchat started auto-advancing Snapchat Story plays. If a person started watching a Story when it was over then the next Story would automatically start playing.
On April 1, Snapchat made a significant milestone, when Bloomberg announced that it was creating 10 billion daily views of videos -- two million more over what Facebook reported at the end of November. By the end of June Snapchat has accumulated 150 million active daily users -exceeding Twitter. Snapchat also released additional video advertisements in June. These ads began appearing the Stories of friends when users started watching the ads.
Snapchat Memories were first introduced in July. It allowed users to save content to their devices to edit later and for sharing. This made content much less spontaneous and interesting which left marketers scratching their heads which direction Snapchat was going to take. Snapchat also announced a partnership with Bitstrips to develop Bitmoji an avatar that users can personalize. Snapchat users could design and use in their Stories and snaps. Here's my "hump day" Bitmoji as a Snapchat filter:
In August 2016, Snapchat's competition to be noticed in the space of social media began to lay the hurdle. Instagram introduced Stories, its version that it developed on Stories as well as Facebook introduced filtering and sticker stickers in its photo application.
The company rebranded in September. Snapchat changed its name, and it was renamed Snap Inc. The parent company to Snapchat as well as Spectacles the new pair of sunglasses that let users take Snapchats in a circular format to allow 360-degree viewing. Due to negative responses in response to Snapchat Stories auto-advancing, the Story Playlist feature was introduced in October. Users were able to select an individual group of Snapchat users with whose Snaps they would like to play automatically instead of this happening automatically.
To further increase the excitement, eMarketer predicted that Snap Inc. would earn $1 billion in advertising revenue by the year 2017 and the launch an application programming interface (API) definitely substantiated this assertion. This algorithm means that Snap Inc. could sell ads to third-party advertisers in a way that isn't dependent on a sales staff and thus, it is now able to generate more revenue from ads, and also make it faster.
The month of November was when Snap Inc. filed for the $25 billion first public offer (IPO) which signaled its world audience that it was in a position to grow rapidly and expansion over the next years. In addition, Instagram launched its own version of ephemeral messages to stay ahead of the familiar yellow ghost.
Snap Inc.'s last Snapchat innovation of 2016, was the launch to groups messaging during December. While users were required to select a group of people they would like to send a certain Snap to, they could save groups of users to send messages which disappear within 24 hours as they did with Stories.
What's Next for Snapchat?
We believe that ephemeral messages will continue to increase in popularity, but we're expecting the ongoing competition among Instagram and Snapchat as well. Advertisers are spending more on advertising on social media than they do on TV advertisements We believe that platforms such as Snapchat will continue to develop innovative ways to display advertisements that are relevantbut not disruptiveto their viewers.