Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown,[6] former students at Stanford University. 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. In 2023, Snapchat had over 300 million monthly active users.[7] On average more than four billion Snaps were sent each day in 2020.[8] Snapchat is popular among the younger generations, with most users being between 18 and 24.[7] Snapchat is subject to privacy concerns with social networking services.
According to documents and deposition statements, Reggie Brown brought the idea for a disappearing-pictures application to Evan Spiegel because Spiegel had prior business experience. Brown and Spiegel then pulled in Bobby Murphy, who had experience coding. The three worked closely together for several months and launched Snapchat as "Picaboo" on the iOS operating system on July 8, 2011.[9][10] Reggie Brown was ousted from the company months after it was launched.[11][12]
The app was relaunched as Snapchat in September 2011, and the team focused on usability and technical aspects, rather than branding efforts.[13] 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.[13]
On May 8, 2012, Reggie Brown sent an email to Evan Spiegel during their senior year at Stanford, in which he offered to re-negotiate his equitable share regarding ownership of the company. Lawyers for Snapchat claimed that Reggie Brown had made no contributions of value to the company, and was therefore entitled to nothing.[14][15] In September 2014, Brown settled with Spiegel and Murphy for $157.5 million[16] and was credited as one of the original authors of Snapchat.[6][17][18]
In their first blog post, dated May 9, 2012, CEO Evan Spiegel described the company's mission: "Snapchat isn't about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It's about communicating with the full range of human emotion—not just what appears to be pretty or perfect."[19] He presented Snapchat as the solution to stresses caused by the longevity of personal information on social media, evidenced by "emergency detagging of Facebook photos before job interviews and photoshopping blemishes out of candid shots before they hit the internet.[19]
As of May 2012, 25 Snapchat images were being sent per second[21] and, as of November 2012, users had shared over one billion photos on the Snapchat iOS app, with 20 million photos being shared per day.[21][22] That same month, Spiegel cited problems with user base scalability as the reason that Snapchat was experiencing some difficulties delivering its images, known as "snaps", in real time.[21] Snapchat was released as an Android app on October 29, 2012.[21] In June 2013, Snapchat version 5.0, dubbed "Banquo", was released for iOS. The updated version introduced several speed and design enhancements, including swipe navigation, double-tap to reply, an improved friend finder, and in-app profiles.[23] The name is a reference to a character from Shakespeare's Macbeth.[24] Also in June 2013, Snapchat introduced Snapkidz for users under 13 years of age. Snapkidz was part of the original Snapchat application and was activated when the user provided a date of birth to verify his/her age. Snapkidz allowed children to take snaps and draw on them, but they could not send snaps to other users and could save snaps only locally on the device being used.[25] According to Snapchat's published statistics, as of May 2015, the app's users were viewing 2 billion videos per day, reaching 6 billion by November.[26] By 2016, Snapchat had hit 10 billion daily video views.[27] In May 2016, Snapchat raised $1.81 billion in equity offering, suggesting strong investor interest in the company.[28] By May 31, 2016, the app had almost 10 million daily active users in the United Kingdom.[29] In February 2017, Snapchat had 160 million daily active users,[30][31] growing to 166 million in May.[32][33]
Investel Capital Corp., a Canadian company, sued Snapchat for infringement on its geofiltering patent in 2016.[34][35] They were seeking "monetary compensation and an order that would prohibit California-based Snapchat from infringing on its patent in the future."[36]
September 2016, Snapchat Inc. was renamed Snap Inc. to coincide with the introduction of the company's first hardware product, Spectacles—smartglasses with a built-in camera that can record 10 seconds of video at a time.[37] On February 20, 2017, Spectacles became available for purchase online.[38] Snapchat announced a redesign in November 2017,[39] which proved controversial with many of its followers. CNBC's Ingrid Angulo listed some of the reasons why many disliked the update, citing that sending a snap and re-watching stories was more complicated, stories and incoming snaps were now listed on the same page, and that the Discover page now included featured and sponsored content.[40] A tweet sent by Kylie Jenner in February 2018, which criticized the redesign of the Snapchat app,[41] reportedly caused Snap Inc. to lose more than $1.3 billion in market value.[42][43] Over 1.2 million people signed a Change.org petition asking the company to remove the new app update.[44] In December 2019, App Annie announced Snapchat to be the 5th most downloaded mobile app of the decade. The data includes figures for iOS downloads starting from 2010 and Android downloads starting from 2012.[45] Snapchat acquired AI Factory, a computer vision startup, in January 2020 to give a boost to its video capabilities.[46]
In November 2020, Snapchat announced it would pay a total of $1 million a day to users who post viral videos. The company has not stated the criteria for a video to be considered viral or how many people the payout would be split between. The promotion, called Snapchat Spotlight, was initially intended to run until the end of the year.[47] As of 2024, the program continues to operate but its payout structure changed in 2021 as the company announced a shift from the $1 million per day model to a "millions per month" one.[48]
In June 2022, Snapchat announced plans to launch Snapchat Plus, a paid subscription model. The subscription gives users early access to features, the ability to change the app icon and see which users rewatch their stories.[49] In July 2022, the company reported that they had 347 million daily active users, an increase of 18% from the previous year.[50] In August 2022, Snapchat announced that Snapchat Plus had more than 1 million subscribers and added four new features to the subscription including priority replies, post-view emoji, new Bitmoji content, and new app icons.[51]