Snapchat’s co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy first worked together while attending Stanford University on a website for students called Future Freshman in 2010.
Originally Snapchat was called Picaboo, and it was first launched in July 2011 in Spiegel’s father’s living room on the Apple App Store.
Picaboo was renamed Snapchat when the app was rebranded and added to the Google Play in 2012 for Android users.
Inspiration for the disappearing messages came to Spiegel and Murphy after a friend regretted sending a photo to someone else.
That friend is supposedly Frank Reginald Brown. Brown approached his friends Spiegel and Murphy with a “million dollar idea”.
The three launched Picaboo, but Brown claims that Spiegel and Murphy ousted him. Since then, Brown has sued his two former friends, who in turn, have filed a restraining order.
It’s been reported that Snapchat’s more than 100 million users share over 400 million snaps daily. That surpasses the photo-sharing activity on both Facebook and Instagram.
According to the Institutional Venture Partners, Snapchat is valued at $800 million thanks to impressive funding drives.
Venture capitalist firm Lightspeed Venture Partners provided $485k of seed funding in May 2012 after one of the partner’s found that the three most popular apps in his daughter’s high-school class were Angry Birds, Instagram and Snapchat.
After their secret first meeting with Mark Zuckerberg in 2013, where Zuckerberg discussed Facebook’s Poke, Spiegel and Murphy gave their six employees copies of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War .
Zuckerberg tried to acquire Snapchat for $1 billion in October 2013. Spiegel and Murphy rejected that offer.
Zuckerberg returned a month later with a $3 billion offer, which was again rebuffed.
Snapchat’s mascot is called “Ghostface Chillah”, a name Brown derived from Ghostface Killah of the group Wu-Tang Clan.
Around 26 percent of 18-29-year-old smartphone users report using Snapchat.
Only 5 percent are among 30-49-year-olds, 3 percent of 50-64 year-olds and 2 percent of 65 and older.
The number of photos shared has skyrocketed from 20 million in October 2012 to 60 million in February 2013, 150 million in April 2013, 200 million in June 2013 to 350 million in September 2013.
Percent of US iPhone users with Snapchat: 20.8%
In the United States, the Snapchat app is 10th on the Apple App Store.
It’s estimated that Snapchat has between 26 to 30 million users in the U.S.
In the United Kingdom, 25 percent of smartphone owners have reported using Snapchat.
It’s been found that 50 percent of all smartphone users in Norway use Snapchat.
Research has found that 70 percent of Snapchat users are women.
In October 2013, Snapchat Stories was unveiled. This ‘timeline’ feature allows users to link shared content, which can be viewed an unlimited amount of times, throughout a 24-hour period.
While brands like Taco Bell, Karmaloop and 16 Handles have been using Snapchat since 2013, the launch of Stories has seen an increase in brands ranging from HBO’s Girls, the New Orleans Saints, and Acura.
One major concern with Snapchat is ‘sexting’ and how Snapchat’s users, mainly those who are below the age of eighteen, use the app.
Studies have shown that ‘sexting’ is more than twice as common among men than women on Snapchat.
If teenagers aren’t being naughty on Snapchat, why are there so many users on Snapchat? Popular responses are: “Send funny pictures to my friends,” “Make silly faces for my friends,” and “Send jokes to my friends.”
Approximately 166 million users use Snapchat every day.
Approximately 301 million people use Snapchat at least once a month.
The average number of Snapchat sent each day in 3 billion.
Approximately 43% of Snapchat users are in North America.
There are roughly 9,000 images sent via Snapchat each minute.
It is estimated that is projected to be earned by Snapchat in 2017 is expected to reach more than $935 million.
The NCAA determined that coaches are able to use Snapchat for recruiting purposes.
Snapchat is estimated to be worth more than $800 million.
In 2013 Mark Zuckerberg attempted to buy Snapchat from Murrphy and Spiegel, for $1 billion but they declined.
The mascot for Snapchat is Ghostface Chilla.
The majority of Snapchat users are between the ages of 18 and 29 year old.
It is estimated that roughly 70%of the users of Snapchat are female.
Snapchat stories allows users to link content which can be viewed for 24 hours an unlimited of times.
Most teenagers that use Snapchat do so to send funny photos, jokes, funny faces and other fun images to their friends.
There is an app for kids under the age of 13 called Snapchat Kidz that allows kids to take photos and caption and draw on the images but they not able to send the images to anyone.
The main users of Snapchat are millennials.
Snapchat was rebranded as Snap Inc. in 2016.
In 2016 Snap Inc. announced that it was releasing Spectacles, glasses that would allow the user to record 10 seconds of video.