The 90’s kids have truly seen the growth and failure, positives and negatives of social
media. We tapped endlessly on our keyboards, chatting away with the very same people we
walked home with barely half an hour back. We set status updates on MSN Messenger, handpicked
from a gamut of lyrics, quotes — anything that projected us as remotely ‘cool’.
It was the first time we could freely talk to our best friends, barely-friends and frenemies,
veiled by a computer screen. It was a classic case of ‘what happens on MSN Messenger stays
on MSN Messenger,’ a thought that subconsciously comforted us. That, to me, was the true advent
of social media. Over the years, the intent stayed constant, but the platforms and features
increased exponentially.
In 2006, when we were past our regrettable Orkut phase, we discovered Facebook, but it
was soon overtaken by our boomer parents. In 2010, we were introduced to Instagram:
users could only upload a single photo or video with sepia-style filters and a caption.
Millennials flocked to Instagram as a temporary escape from the overdose of features, advertisements,
Gen X and Baby Boomers on Facebook. A picture is worth a thousand words, and Instagram is
testament to that.
Snapchat was born
Amplifying the concept of ‘less is more’, Snapchat, another multimedia-sharing mobile-only
platform was launched. But, with a twist: photos and videos with short captions would
self-destruct within 10 seconds. CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel first launched the app from the
living room of his father’s home in July 2011. Two years later, around the same time
“stories” were added to the platform, Facebook attempted to buy out Snapchat for
$3 billion, an offer Spiegel declined. Come August 2014, 40 percent of adults in the United
States were using the app on a daily basis.
But Snapchat’s growth didn’t end there. In following years, Snapchat rolled out “Discover,”
“Lenses” (filters), “Snapstreaks,” “Memories” and integrated Bitmojis, all
of which have remained integral to the app. The company received a significantly larger
buyout offer — this time valued at $30 billion from Google —which Spiegel declined again.
Snapchat was the “it” platform at the moment, and nothing could seem to knock it
down.
A mere 3 years after its launch, Snapchat’s rise was exponential, to say the least. The
photo sharing app quickly got over a 100 million users in its first few years and between 2015
and 2016, Snapchat had more than doubled its users, falling a little shy of 300 million
on a daily basis. With numbers increasing faster than any other social media platform
at the time, Snapchat’s rise to success made it obvious this was not just a fad, but
a lasting movement.
What made the rise so impressive was that Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat and his
team even started monetizing the app in creative ways. From acting as a platform that made
the concept of influencers popular to convincing brands and celebrities alike that vertical
videos were the next big thing, Snapchat was on the path to becoming a brand new trendsetter.
To make sharing on this app all the more exciting, Snapchat introduced geofilters and started
playing around with celebrity stories and creative placement of banners, monetization
through this app was at an all time high. Users were happy, advertisers were happy and
the core Snapchat team was ecstatic. Everything was falling in place perfectly.
Beginning of the END?
Spiegel, as a CEO, was extremely effective. He knew what his core audience wanted and
knew how to deliver the right things at the right time. Unfortunately, he didn’t have
the resolve to see the bigger picture. One of the primary things which went wrong for
Snapchat was they didn’t see the growth was necessary because it needed to be more
than what people were doing. Spiegel refused to see beyond the data and to think beyond
what was already there.
In the same year, when snap turned over its best quarter yet, Instagram rolled out its
own version of user stories in August 2016. This was the turning point that ultimately
led to Snapchat’s eventual downfall.
Users of both platforms were originally repulsed by Instagram stories, which were merely used
as an outlet for users to post Snapchat handles and dismiss the new tool altogether. Over
time, though, users became accustomed to seeing stories appear at the top of their feed and
slowly began experimenting with the feature.
At first, many users would post the exact same content to both Snapchat and Instagram
without a second thought. Now, Instagram Stories have evolved into a beast of their own, amplified
by doodles, GIFs and location tags — all elements that Snapchat has, sure, but Instagram
just does it better. Namely, Instagram Stories has become an important element for brand
pages and audience engagement that goes beyond a simple post.
Snapchat attempted a full-fledged redesign to fight social media giants like Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter. They were desperate to own the space that no one else did with
an idea that sounded novel — separate the ‘social’ from the ‘media’. In an initial
attempt, the redesign caused a lot of confusion in terms of navigation. Users didn’t know
where to go to find their friends’ stories, because these were so well-embedded in the
‘social’ tab which was a log of sent and received Snaps as in the original Snapchat.
In a subsequent attempt, Snapchat combined friends’ stories with those of celebrities,
ad plugins and content pieces under the ‘Discover’ button. This created a disconnect — why
was I seeing my friends’ story along with The Daily Mail? A glaring takeaway from Snapchat’s
redesign was more features, more confusion.
To make matters worse, Kylie Jenner — who previously used Snapchat to engage with her
fans, generate hype surrounding her company Kylie Cosmetics and bring millions of users
to the platform in the process tweeted in February: “Sooo does anyone else use Snapchat
anymore? Or is it just me … ugh this is so sad.”
Her audience primarily comprises teens and young adults — Snapchat’s primary demographic
— and her tweet received over 365,000 likes in agreement.
The result of her statements? Snapchat’s market value was sliced off overnight by more
than $1.5 billion. Kylie now keeps to Instagram to engage her audience and post daily content
about her lifestyle, which has only continued to increase her following.
“Still love you tho snap,” Jenner tweeted as a follow-up. “My first love.”
Jenner’s tweet didn’t alone cause the decline but highlighted how unhappy users
were with the redesign.
Many believed that this was the end of snapchat. From the second quarter of 2018, Snapchat
slowly began hemorrhaging users and by the end of 2018, shares were below $5 each. In
contrast, when it went public in early 2017, shares were $17 each.
Rising back... To say many were pessimistic about Snapchat’s
future would be an understatement. But Snap has managed to claw its way back.
They consistently released new features, new ad units, new partnerships and re-designed
their android app which has meant they could further expand into countries such as India,
which has grown 40 per cent in year on year.
Differentiation was key to continue growth.
Snapchat’s initial success was down to its ephemeral messaging and privacy. But along
with copying pretty much every other function they’ve released, Instagram was now coming
after that too with its new close friends-only Threads app which launched in late 2018.
But Snap announced the total daily time spent watching its ‘Discover’ content had increased
40 per cent, which at the moment, was probably Snapchat’s best differentiator from other
social platforms such as Instagram. Snap continued to roll out new content for Discover, and
new ad formats that enable brands to tap into the popularity of its TV-sty programming,
which is shorter, per episode, than traditional TV, but more aligned to Snap usage.
The company also attributed some of the uptick in user numbers to the long-awaited redesign
of the Snapchat app for Android phones, which make up a slim majority of smartphones in
the U.S. but are an overwhelming market leader in the rest of the world.
Even after its bounce back, snapchat isn’t close to social media behemoth that are Facebook
and instagram, that's why platform doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon.
In 2020 Snap is preparing to launch a Bitmoji TV series, which users can personalize using
their own animated Bitmoji characters.
Expected to live within Snapchat’s Discover section, the new series is expected to debut
in February 2020. How frequently Snap plans to release episodes -- and how it plans to
monetize Bitmoji TV -- is unknown.
This isn’t Snap’s first attempt to turn Bitmoji into something more than digital stickers
and games. For example, Snap has already had success with Bitmoji Stories -- a cartoon
starring users and their friends. In December 2018, the unique content offering reached
more than 40 million viewers.
Pure-play digital platforms like Snapchat and Facebook are pumping out original content,
research suggests. Thanks, in part, to such efforts, Snapchat is growing faster than some
researchers expected.
By the end of the year, eMarketer, a market research company, expects the app to boast
about 293 million users worldwide. If accurate, that would represent about 14% growth, year-over-year,
which is more than the research firm was previously expecting.
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