Author: rbreslow

(https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-business/)

This image illustrates the various ways that Snapchat makes it money. It is funny how they have all of these forms of income, yet, they are losing money. As stated before in a previous post, due to the high demand of users on Snapchat, they are constantly having to use the money they are making to buy more storage space for pictures, videos, advertisements, etc…

I was unable to find more information when looking deeper into who works at Snapchat and what they are being paid. It would be interesting to know these details considering they amount of money they are losing when buying more photo space.

I believe one of the main reasons that Snapchat is valued so high (about $22 million) even thought it is constantly losing money, is because so many companies are investing (along with personal investors) and paying for advertisements to get their word out to teens and the youth to educate them with both old and new media which can be referred to back in the chart above.

When one thinks of Snapchat they typically think of teens taking selfies. This is in fact very true. The youth plays a major role in being part of the 161 million daily active users. On average, there are 2.5 billion Snapchats sent per day which was last updated on February 2, 2017. In 2014, so this statistic is continuously growing from here, 77% if college students were using Snapchat to send pictures to their peers and document their daily lives.

The statistics above alone show the major influence and impact that Snapchat has on youth today. The majority of youth today feel the need to document everything around them. If there is a rainbow they will make that their story. If there is a protest going on in their town, they will make it their story as well. This now relate to Snapchat’s influence on the media and the news. Snapchat has a discover page that had multiple sponsors that have daily updates on various news sites such as The  New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post. On the other hand, looking at more of the entertainment side of news, there is a discover page for People, Cosmopolitan, Vogue along with so much more. Each college campus also has a section where students can post about updates that occur on campus. Some are entertaining while others are more informational.

 

Looking at all these statics and amount of people that use Snapchat one would think it is making a lot of money. Well the answer is no, it is not. Snapchat is free first of all, along with many of the other social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. Unlike those, Snapchat losses a lot of money. One of the major reasons is because they need to constantly buy more storage because of all the pictures, videos and messages that are going through Snapchat by the second. It is in fact bringing in revenue by selling to advertisers so they are able to publicize their product and make different geotags but they are losing more money than they are making. Overall, the company is a potential risk factor.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38850229 (click to watch video)

Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown are their names. The co-founders of the popular smartphone app called Snapchat. Spiegel and Murphy are now worth about $4 billion each. While attending Stanford University, the college students thought, I wish the pictures I was sending to girls would disappear after I send them. They then had an epiphany: we should create an app that does this!

When it originally launched, its name was Picaboo and had about 127 followers within the first 3 months. Drama emerged between the 3 co-founders with Brown on one side and Murphy and Spiegel on the other eventually kicking Brown out and leaving him with nothing.

Later on, in the fall of 2011 Spiegel and Murphy knew the name needed to be changed and that is when the name Snapchat popped into their minds! Within a year, and mainly by word of mouth, Snapchat now had about 100,000 users. At this point, Murphy has graduated by Spiegel was still in college. Once they had an investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spiegel dropped out of Stanford weeks before graduating.

Around Christmas time of 2012, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, was launching a new feature on Facebook called, Poke, which only gave more spotlight to Snapchat and it was soon forgotten about. No wonder, I have never even heard of this version of Poke on Facebook. This only made Spiegel and Murphy more well known and richer after that small obstacle, so many people were signing up to use Snapchat!

Zuckerberg offered to buy out Snapchat for $3 billion and it backfired when Spiegel and Murphy refused the offer. Overtime, big brands are taking interest in Snapchat and being featured on its Discovery section on the app where various news sources are being advertised. Which bring us to today. Murphy and Spiegel have reached a market in which no one has ever touched before. They are both, separately, worth about $4 billion. Many want to invest thousands and this company and the power structure of Snapchat will continuously grow into a social media empire.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNmGfVHRmVg

Ryan Breslow

Snapchat allows you to talk to friends by using pictures as well as view stories from various people from around the world! It is an app that allows you to live in the moment and share your experiences in the now. Filters and various geotags, depending on where you are in the world, make Snapchat just so much more exciting! It takes taking regular everyday pictures to a whole new level.

When first starting to research this topic, most of the findings were not surprising. Most of the information was stating how Snapchat is on the rise and by not only youths but youth teaching their parents how to use this app as well! Most of the information I am finding was relatively the same. This made finding various sources with different information on Snapchat a little difficult. Snapchat is such a new platform and it is only going to be growing from here.

Today’s youth are addicted to the different filters that are constantly being changed daily with new and interesting ones always being offered. They attract the youth, and even many adults, in todays society. Geofilters are also a very exciting feature of snapchat that allows you to show your location by adding a fun and exciting designs. During the political campaign, the candidates used geofilters to help snapchat users, mainly young adults, to remember to vote. This is just one example of a way that people are able to customize them and make it fun while still sharing an important message.