One exception was the decision to keep a mascot designed by Brown, 'Ghostface Chillah', named after Ghostface Killah of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. The app was relaunched as Snapchat in September 2011, and the team focused on usability and technical aspects, rather than branding efforts. Reggie Brown was ousted from the company months after it was launched. The three worked closely together for several months and launched Snapchat as 'Picaboo' on the iOS operating system on July 8, 2011. Brown and Spiegel then pulled in Bobby Murphy, who had experience coding. PrototypeĪccording to documents and deposition statements, Reggie Brown brought the idea for a disappearing pictures application to Evan Spiegel because Spiegel had prior business experience. Snapchat is popular among the younger generations, particularly those below the age of 16, leading to many privacy concerns for parents.įor a chronological guide, see Timeline of Snapchat. On average more than four billion Snaps are sent each day. In July 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users, a 23% growth over a year. It is known for representing a mobile-first direction for social media, and places significant emphasis on users interacting with virtual stickers and augmented reality objects.

Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University. It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called 'my eyes only'.

The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' 'Stories' of 24 hours of chronological content, along with 'Discover', letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc.

Snapchat account