Can Snapchat Snap Back?

Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy founded Snapchat in 2011 while studying at Stanford University (O’Connell 2020). They wanted to create a social media app that allowed users to post photos and videos that would disappear after just a few moments. In July of 2011, they released “Picaboo”, which was the precursor to what would later be relaunched as Snapchat in September of that year (O’Connell 2020).

Snapchat quickly became a hit with users because young people were attracted to a site where their social media history would not come back to haunt them; they could be silly and goofy without having to worry about untagging themselves and deleting photos before a job interview or having embarrassing photos being held against them (O'Connell 2020).

In 2012, Snapchat introduced the ability to send videos, and in 2013 introduced the “stories” and “chat” features. It was in November of that year when Mark Zuckerberg presented Snapchat’s founders with a 3-billion-dollar deal to buy the company, which Snapchat subsequently declined. In October of 2014, Snapchat began to allow advertising (O’Connell 2020).

In March of 2017 Snapchat went public at $24 a share, quenching a thirst in the market for tech IPOs, and was the first major social media IPO to be released since Twitter in 2013 (Balakrishnan 2017). In early 2018 a redesign was launched that proved to be quite controversial with users. The update made stories more difficult to view and cluttered the discover page with articles and advertisements. A tweet by Kylie Jenner in February of that year reportedly caused Snap Inc. to lose more than $1.3 billion in market value (Levin 2018).

Snapchat’s goal was and continues to be a social media platform that is more casual and authentic than other social media platforms. In the company’s first blog post, co-founder Evan Spiegel wrote that “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… We’re building a photo app that doesn’t conform to unrealistic notions of beauty or perfection but rather creates a space to be funny, honest or whatever else you might feel at the moment you take and share a Snap” (O’Connell 2020). They wanted to provide users with an experience that was as ephemeral as real life, where conversations were remembered but usually not saved.

Although Snapchat has implemented many new features such as the revamped discover page, it seems as though they are looking to go back to basics. According to last year’s memo, their current objectives are to make snapchat the fastest way to communicate, find best friends for all Snapchatters, achieve full year profitability, lead the way in augmented reality, and spread positivity (Jan van der Pol 2019). Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel explains that he wants the company to focus on its core strengths again, focusing on what made Snapchat popular in the first place. He writes that he does not want Snapchat to be lumped in with the rest of social media but rather continue to be a fast and effective communication tool. “Invest in the root if you want the fruit” (Jan van der Pol 2019). One of Snapchat’s objectives, to become profitable, is one of its most pressing. Snapchat needs to become profitable within the next few years, or it could run out of money (Constine 2020).

In terms of achieving their monetary goals from a strategic standpoint, Snapchat ads have proven to be a very effective way for the company to make money, and it is by far their main source of revenue (Rioja 2020). Unlike other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat ads capture 100% of the screen and are usually displayed between viewing your friends’ stories. In 2017, Snapchat reported that 60% of these ads are watched with sound (Rioja 2020), making them much more attention grabbing to users and attractive to advertisers.

Snapchat has also been partnering with the NFL, MLB, and other sports organizations (Rioja 2020). Sports organizations use Snapchat as a way to promote attendance to their games from younger generations, so the relationship is mutually beneficial and is one of the ways Snapchat manages to stay afloat. The discovery section has also proven to be lucrative to Snapchat, as content creators and journalists can pay to use it to entice viewers to consume their content (Rioja 2020) and this makes Snapchat a good investment compared to SEO. The discover page also provides Snapchat users with news which can make users more inclined to spend more time on the app even if they are not currently snapchatting anyone or watching their friends’ stories.

The app’s main goal remains to be a fast, fun, and casual communication tool, and Snapchat has an array of features that have made it such an attractive method of communication for its millions of users. The fact that the photos and videos that one snaps to friends or adds to their story will last no longer than a day was what attracted so many users to the app and continues to be its trademark. The fact that users are notified when someone takes a screenshot of a picture or a chat is a feature that also encourages users to feel as though they can post more casually. Although Snapchat’s story feature has been copied by other social media platforms, Snapchat remains the only major platform that notifies users when someone screenshots their story or their private chat (Tillman 2020). This allows users to feel more comfortable posting casual or silly things to their Snapchat stories than they would to their Instagram stories. Additionally, Snapchat still emphasizes photos being taken in the moment rather than being posted from the camera roll. Users can post from the camera roll, but their photo will be labeled as such (Tillman 2020). This makes Snapchat stories feel more “real” in a way, as they had to be taken in the moment and could not have been edited without being labeled as such. Snapchat stories in this sense are more raw and spontaneous than Instagram stories, the latter of which can be edited to perfection before posting.

Another feature that Snapchat has used to facilitate communication is through their “Snapcodes”, which allow users to add each other by simply scanning the code, as well as the “add nearby” function, which allows users to add others who are within their close proximity (Tillman 2020). Snapchat wants users to be able to make and find new friends through the app easily, so they have added features to aid with that. The “Snapcash” feature allows users to receive and send real money to each other easily through the app (Tillman 2020).

Snapchat also wants to continue to innovate and lead the way in augmented reality and has been mostly successful in doing so. Snapchat was the first major social network to utilize and popularize augmented reality filters, and although it no longer feels fresh especially because Instagram now does the same thing, Snapchat is continuing to look for new ways to push the envelope. An example of this would be their new 3D World Lenses, which affect the environment around you when your camera is facing away from you (Tillman 2020). Snapchat’s augmented reality feature also allows them to make a profit by letting advertisers buy sponsored lenses (Rioja 2020). Advertisers find these sponsored lenses to be particularly attractive because they are an ad that users want to interact with and share, instead of just skipping over. By implementing sponsored lenses Snapchat is helping itself reach their financial objectives as well as their innovation objectives.

Another one of Snapchat’s goals is to make friends feel closer to one another, and they achieve this through Bitmojis, their Snap Map, and their streaks and best friends feature (Tillman 2020). Snapchat is the only major social media network to allow for users to represent themselves through a customizable avatar, in this case, Bitmojis (Tillman 2020). Along with the Snap Map, which shows the location of a user’s friends in Bitmoji form spread throughout the world, the Bitmoji feature gives users a visual representation of their community, making said community feel more real and less abstract. Additionally, the Snapstreak features lets users create a streak based on how many consecutive days they have Snapchatted each other (Tillman 2020). Along with making Snapchat more addictive, this makes users feel closer to each other, especially combined with the best friends feature. The best friends feature shows a heart emoji next to your best friends name if you are mutually best friends with that person. The heart emoji will change colors if you and your best friends stay mutual best friends on Snapchat for a certain amount of time. These types of features can create real feelings of closeness between friends (Tillman 2020).

SWOT Analysis

Strengths: Snapchat has been around for almost 10 years and has accumulated a large user base and much notoriety and is a very recognizable brand. Its user base grew by 9 million in the second quarter of 2020 and its revenue is up 17 percent from 2019 (Carman 2020). Snapchat’s disappearing chats along with its casual feel and many of its other features are still unique enough to attract new users. The disappearing chats also make Snapchat more privacy friendly. The visuality of the Bitmojis and the nature of sending photos makes Snapchat more visually engaging which is important on social media (Hausman 2017). The company is also attractive to advertisers because of its unique ad opportunities, such as promoted lenses and promoted geo-filters (Rioja 2020).

Weaknesses: The company is overly reliant on advertising for revenue; they depend on advertising for 98% of their revenue (Johnston 2020) and have largely failed to secure other streams of income. The company also often makes updates that users are unhappy with, most famously in 2018 which led to a 1 billion dollar drop in the value of the company, thanks to a complaint by Kylie Jenner and other users (Levin 2018). SNAP is continuing to perform poorly on the stock market (Martin 2019). Camera quality on Snapchat is noticeably lower than on a phone’s native camera app, especially with Android phones (Hildenbrand 2020).

Opportunities: People are becoming more concerned about privacy (Zia Muhammad 2020), making Snapchat’s disappearing messages sound attractive. Additionally, with the rise of cancel culture (Greenspan 2020), a way to message someone and post that will disappear and (usually) not be screenshotted is alluring for users who do not want to jeopardize their future. There is also an increase in the overall usage of smartphones (Engebretson 2020) which will be beneficial to Snapchat as it is a smartphone only platform; a web version does not exist. With COVID-19 and people looking for a way to keep in touch with their friends from a distance, Snapchat makes it easy to keep in touch with friends from a distance and send messages to multiple friends at once (Engebretson 2020).

Threats: The greatest threat to Snapchat is undoubtedly its competition. After Facebook failed to buy Snapchat in 2017, they did their best to create a copy of Snapchat’s extremely popular story feature that has become exceptionally successful on Instagram (Heath 2017). Facebook’s continued copying of Snapchat with things like location-based stories, 3D face filters, geo-filters, and the ability to send disappearing photos, has caused them to successfully steal and convert large amounts of Snapchat’s users (Constine 2017). The prominence of WhatsApp in other countries also makes it more difficult for Snapchat to become popular outside of the United States as the go-to messaging app, especially as WhatsApp adds more features like stories and allows users to make their own creative stickers and gifs (Iqbal 2020).

Summary

Snapchat overall has had an extremely successful run, thanks to its unique features and ease of use. It has changed the way many young people communicate and has been very influential not only in our culture but also has also influenced many other social media sites. Snapchat’s refusal to be bought by Facebook in 2013 was a brave decision that ultimately led to Facebook going after them. Facebook’s repeated copying of Snapchat, especially with the stories feature in 2017, has led to a decline in Snapchat story viewing (Constine 2017)(See Item B in attachments for visual). This combined with a poorly received update in early 2018 proved to be the beginning of Snapchat’s decline in dominance.

Recommendations

Snapchat is aware of their current challenges and based on the memo from CEO Evan Spiegel at the end of 2018, they plan on focusing on strengthening their core features and what makes them unique. This is the right direction for them; they need to be fixated on being the most intuitive, fastest, and most enjoyable communication app.

The most pressing issue with Snapchat’s current interface is the horizontal scrolling that is needed to navigate through and find specific friend’s stories. Most of the screen is currently taken up by a “For You” section full of influencers the user does not know personally. If Snapchat wants to be about real connections, they need to bring back vertical scrolling through stories that facilitates viewing the stories of people the user knows in real life. The horizontal scrolling to view stories is passable on Instagram because stories are not Instagram’s main feature and most of the real estate on the page is taken up by posts made by people the user follows. The “For You” section should be moved to a different tab altogether.

Additionally, the discover tab, while certainly a good source of revenue for Snapchat, is full of clickbait articles and tabloid-like columns. The page feels like an advertisement collection, and there is not much of an incentive for users to go there. Snapchat should attempt to obtain advertisements from more reputable news outlets and diversify the type of content that is there, especially as their core audience grows older.

The quality of Snapchat’s in-house camera is of a noticeably lower quality than the native camera app’s camera on both iOS devices and Androids. This is mostly a problem because Instagram’s stories allow for photos of a higher quality and with more vivid colors. This problem is especially apparent with Android phones because Android phones and their cameras are so diverse; it takes more effort to program a camera for a social media app that will work well with all Android phones (Hildenbrand 2020). Snapchat should allocate more resources into making the Snapchat software work well with all Android devices. Even Instagram and Facebook still have trouble adjusting to Android’s cameras, so if Snapchat finally solved the problem, Android users would feel more comfortable and would be more excited to share their photos.

One of Instagram’s best features is the ability to share the posts of others on your Instagram story. This has allowed for certain posts to spread exponentially and has been particularly effective in types of activism like raising awareness or gathering signatures. Snapchat should implement a feature in which users can easily share links from the stories of others to their own stories and allow users to choose if their stories can be reposted by others. This would allow for that wildfire effect that happens on Instagram to take place on Snapchat.

Snapchat wants to be a user’s go-to messaging app, and therefore should aim to be as intuitive, seamless, and fun as possible. They should focus on the real-life relationships that the users have with one another and think about how they can continue to create a more interesting and high quality messaging experience. They need to start listening to users who are unhappy with the updates they have made, and continue to innovate with their stories feature, finding ways to one-up Instagram.

Sources

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Greenspan, R. (2020, August 05). How 'cancel culture' quickly became one of the buzziest and most controversial ideas on the internet. Retrieved October 18, 2020, from https://www.insider.com/cancel-culture-meaning-history-origin-phrase-used-negatively-2020-7

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