Evolution of Snapchat

Evolution of Snapchat

With the advancement in technology, social media has seen a huge boom. It is now easier and cheaper to communicate and connect with people across the world. Through social media, people can communicate and share their thoughts with many people at the same time. It is easy to share information like pictures, advertisements, videos and text messages. It is also a great source of entertainment as well as news of the current happenings of the world. One such great social media platform is Snapchat.         

Snapchat is a mobile messaging application used to share photos, videos, text, and drawings that was created in 2011 by three Stanford students. It’s free to download the app and free to send messages using it. It has become hugely popular in a very short space of time, especially with young people. It is giving the makers of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram a run for their money. There is one feature that makes Snapchat different from other forms of texting and photo sharing applications: the messages disappear from the recipient’s phone after a few seconds.

Snapchat uses various technologies to keep their platform running. The use of these technologies is what helps snapchat create a niche for itself in the market. For their, messaging service snapchat uses the google cloud messaging and python. This is backed by Frame.io and Microsoft office 365 which helps the users privately upload, review, and share their videos. Snapchat uses HackerOne to protect the users from bugs and it also streamlines vulnerability coordination. For better customer support Snapchat uses Zendesk.

Snapchat was conceived as a part of a class project by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. This idea came forth when one of the inventors wished that the pictures he was sending to a girl would disappear. Thus the idea of the app was born. The creators came up with the app “Pictaboo”. [pic 1]

Since there was a conflict between the owners, Brown was removed from the company and two months later, the app was relaunched by the name “Snapchat”.

Snapchat introduced the ability of sending video snaps in addition to the snaps in December of 2012. After a single viewing the video would disappear just like the snaps. On October 2013, the feature of “My Story” was added to Snapchat enabling the users to publish a chronological series of photos and videos that could be accessible to all the contacts of the users just for a period of 24 hours.