Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. 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. 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. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "my eyes only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.
Original author(s)
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 July 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users, a 23% growth over a year.[7] On average more than four billion Snaps are sent each day.[8] Snapchat is popular among the younger generations, particularly those below the age of 16, leading to many privacy concerns for parents.
Features
Core functionality
Snapchat is primarily used for creating multimedia messages referred to as "snaps"; snaps can consist of a photo or a short video, and can be edited to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings.[52][53] Snaps can be directed privately to selected contacts, or to a semi-public "Story" or a public "Story" called "Our Story".[54] The ability to send video snaps was added as a feature option in December 2012. By holding down on the photo button while inside the app, a video of up to ten seconds in length can be captured. Spiegel explained that this process allowed the video data to be compressed into the size of a photo.[55] A later update allowed the ability to record up to 60 seconds, but are still segmented into 10 second intervals. After a single viewing, the video disappears by default. On May 1, 2014, the ability to communicate via video chat was added. Direct messaging features were also included in the update, allowing users to send ephemeral text messages to friends and family while saving any needed information by clicking on it.[56][57] According to CIO, Snapchat uses real-time marketing concepts and temporality to make the app appealing to users.[58] According to Marketing Pro, Snapchat attracts interest and potential customers by combining the AIDA (marketing) model with modern digital technology.[59]
Private message photo snaps can be viewed for a user-specified length of time (1 to 10 seconds as determined by the sender) before they become inaccessible. Users were previously required to hold down on the screen in order to view a snap; this behavior was removed in July 2015[60] The requirement to hold on the screen was intended to frustrate the ability to take screenshots of snaps; the Snapchat app does not prevent screenshots from being taken but can notify the sender if it detects that it has been saved. However, these notifications can be bypassed through either unauthorized modifications to the app or by obtaining the image through external means.[13][21][61] One snap per day can be replayed for free.[62] In September 2015, Snapchat introduced the option to purchase additional replays through in-app purchases.[63][62][64] The ability to purchase extra replays was removed in April 2016.[65][66]
Friends can be added via usernames and phone contacts, using customizable "Snapcodes", or through the "Add Nearby" function, which scans for users near their location who are also in the Add Nearby menu.[60][67] Spiegel explained that Snapchat is intended to counteract the trend of users being compelled to manage an idealized online identity of themselves, which he says has "taken all of the fun out of communicating."[13]
In November 2014, Snapchat introduced "Snapcash", a feature that lets users send and receive money to each other through private messaging. The payments system is powered by Square.[68][69]
In July 2016, Snapchat introduced a new, optional feature known as "Memories". Memories allow snaps and story posts to be saved into a private storage area, where they can be viewed alongside other photos stored on the device, as well as edited and published as snaps, story posts, or messages anytime. When shared with a user's current story, the memory would have a timestamp to indicate its age. Content in the Memories storage area can be searched by date or using a local object recognition system. Snaps accessible within Memories can additionally be placed into a "My Eyes Only" area that is locked with a Personal identification number (PIN). Snapchat has stated that the Memories feature was inspired by the practice of manually scrolling through photos on a phone to show them to others.[70] In April 2017, the white border around old memories was removed. While originally intended to let viewers know the material was old, TechCrunch wrote that the indicator "ended up annoying users who didn't want their snaps altered, sometimes to the point where they would decide not to share the old content at all."[71][72]
In May 2017, an update made it possible to send snaps with unlimited viewing time,[73] dropping the previous ten-second maximum duration, with the content disappearing after being deliberately closed by the recipient. New creative tools, namely the ability to draw with an emoji, videos that play in a loop, and an eraser that lets users remove objects in a photo with the app filling in the space with the background, were also released.[74][75]
In July 2017, Snapchat started allowing users to add links to snaps, enabling them to direct viewers to specific websites; the feature was only available for brands previously. Additionally, the update added more creative tools: A "Backdrop" feature lets users cut out a specific object from their photo and apply colorful patterns to it in order to bring greater emphasis to that object, and "Voice Filters" enable users to remix the sounds of their voices in the snap. Voice Filters was previously available as part of the feature enabling augmented reality lenses, with the new update adding a dedicated speaker icon to remix the audio in any snap.[76][77]
In June 2020, Snap announced "minis", embeddable apps that live inside the parent Snap app.[78]
In August 2022, Snap launched the "Family Center" feature which allows parents to monitor the activity of their children, ages 13–18, within the app.[79]
In February 2023, Snapchat launched "My AI", a custom chatbot offering Snapchat+ users access to a mobile version of the AI chatbot ChatGPT.[80] It followed up by announcing that its customizable My AI chatbot would be accessible to all users within the app in April 2023, a month after OpenAI allowed access to third parties, and would be available for group chats.[81][69]
Business and multimedia
Demographics
From its earliest days, Snapchat's main demographic has consisted of the Generation Z age group. On the app store, the age classification is 12+.[142] In 2014, researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University designed a user survey to help understand how and why the application was being used. The researchers originally hypothesized that due to the ephemeral nature of Snapchat messages, its use would be predominantly for privacy-sensitive content including the much talked about potential use for sexual content and sexting.[143] However, it appears that Snapchat is used for a variety of creative purposes that are not necessarily privacy-related at all.[143]
In the study, only 1.6% of respondents reported using Snapchat primarily for sexting, although 14.2% admitted to having sent sexual content via Snapchat at some point.[143] These findings suggest that users do not seem to utilize Snapchat for sensitive content. Rather, the primary use for Snapchat was found to be for comedic content such as "stupid faces" with 59.8% of respondents reporting this use most commonly.[143] The researchers also determined how Snapchat users do not use the application and what types of content they are not willing to send. They found that the majority of users are not willing to send content classified as sexting (74.8% of respondents), photos of documents (85.0% of respondents), messages containing legally questionable content (86.6% of respondents), or content considered mean or insulting (93.7% of respondents).[143]
The study results also suggested that Snapchat's success is not due to its security properties, but because the users found the application to be fun. The researchers found that users seem to be well-aware (79.4% of respondents) that recovering snaps is possible and a majority of users (52.8% of respondents) report that this does not affect their behavior and use of Snapchat.[143] Many users (52.8% of respondents) were found to use an arbitrary timeout length on snaps regardless of the content type or recipient. The remaining respondents were found to adjust their snaps' timeout depending on the content or the recipient.[143] Reasons for adjusting the time length of snaps included the level of trust and relationship with the recipient, the time needed to comprehend the snap, and avoiding screenshots.[143]
Communication
Snapchat has often been seen to represent a new direction in social media, with its users craving a more in-the-moment way of sharing and communicating via technology. With less emphasis on the accumulation of an ongoing status involving the presence of permanent material, Snapchat put the focus on the ephemeral nature of fleeting encounters.[144] Building on this distinction by launching as a mobile-first company, Snapchat, in the midst of the app revolution and the growing presence of cellular communication, did not have to make the transition to mobile in the way other competing social media networks had to do. Evan Spiegel himself described Snapchat as primarily a camera company.[145][146] Spiegel also dismissed past comparisons to other social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter when he was asked if the 2016 presidential race was going to be remembered as the Snapchat election, although major candidates did occasionally use the app to reach voters.[147] Nevertheless, the growing mobile app moved to offer distinct publication, media, and news content within its Discover channel, as well as with its overall style of presentation. With Snapchat, a clear and identifiable line was drawn between brand content and user-based messaging and sharing, once again distinguishing the popular app from other social media networks, which typically have blended and blurred their different varieties of content.[148]
Monetization
Snapchat's developing features embody a deliberate strategy of monetization.
Snapchat announced its then-upcoming advertising efforts on October 17, 2014, when it acknowledged its need for a revenue stream.[149] The company stated that it wanted to evaluate "if we can deliver an experience that's fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted."[150] Snapchat's first paid advertisement, in the form of a 20-second movie trailer for the horror film Ouija, was shown to users on October 19, 2014.[151][152]
In January 2015, Snapchat began making a shift from focusing on growth to monetization. The company launched its "Discover" feature, which allowed for paid advertising by presenting short-form content from publishers. Its initial launch partners included CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN and Food Network, among others.[111][112][153] In June 2015, Snapchat announced that it would allow advertisers to purchase sponsored geofilters for snaps; an early customer of the offering was McDonald's, who paid for a branded geofilter covering its restaurant locations in the United States.[82] Snapchat made a push to earn ad revenue from its "Live Stories" feature in 2015, after initially launching the feature in 2014. Ad placements can be sold within a live story, or a story can be pitched by a sponsor. Live stories are estimated to reach an average of 20 million viewers in a 24-hour span.[106]
Campaigns
In September 2015, the service entered into a partnership with the National Football League to present live stories from selected games (including a Sunday game, and marquee games such as Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football), with both parties contributing content and handling ad sales.[106][154] The 2015 Internet Trends Report by Mary Meeker highlighted the significant growth of vertical video viewing. Vertical video ads like Snapchat's are watched in their entirety nine times more than landscape video ads.[155]
In 2016, Gatorade came out with an animated filter as part of the Super Bowl ads in 2016.[156] The dunk lens of Gatorade received 165 million views on Snapchat.[157]
In April 2016, NBC Olympics announced that it had reached a deal with Snapchat to allow stories from the 2016 Summer Olympics to be featured on Snapchat in the United States. The content would include a behind-the-scenes Discover channel curated by BuzzFeed (a company which NBCUniversal has funded), and stories featuring a combination of footage from NBC, athletes, and attendees. NBC sold advertising and entered into revenue sharing agreements. This marked the first time NBC allowed Olympics footage to be featured on third-party property.[158]
In May 2016, as part of a campaign to promote X-Men: Apocalypse, 20th Century Fox paid for the entire array of lenses to be replaced by those based on characters from the X-Men series and films for a single day.[159] In July 2016, it was reported that Snapchat had submitted a patent application for the process of using an object recognition system to deliver sponsored filters based on objects seen in a camera view.[160] Later that year, in September 2016, Snapchat released its first hardware product, called the Spectacles. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., called it "a toy" but saw it as an upside to freeing his app from smartphone cameras.[161]
In April 2017, Digiday reported that Snapchat would launch a self-service manager for advertising on the platform.[162] The feature launched the following month, alongside news of a Snapchat Mobile Dashboard for tracking ad campaigns, which rolled out in June to select countries.[163] Also in 2017, Snapchat introduced a "Snap to Store" advertising tool that lets companies using geostickers to track whether users buy their product or visit their store in a 7-day period after seeing the relevant geosticker.[164][165] On November 13, 2018, Snapchat announced the launch of the Snap Store, where they sell Bitmoji merchandise personalized by avatars from users and their friends. Items for sale include shirts, mugs, shower curtains, and phone cases.[166]
Development platform
In June 2018, Snapchat announced a new third-party development platform known as Snap Kit: a suite of components that allows partners to provide third-party integrations with aspects of the service. "Login Kit" is a social login platform that utilizes Snapchat accounts. It was promoted as being more privacy-conscious than competing equivalents, as services are only able to receive the user's display name (and, optionally, a Bitmoji avatar) and are subject to a 90-day inactivity timeout, preventing them from being able to collect any further personal information or social graphs through their authorization. "Creative Kit" allows apps to generate their own stickers to overlay into Snapchat posts. "Story Kit" can be used to embed and aggregate publicly posted stories (with for example, Bandsintown using Story Kit to aggregate stories posted by musicians), while "Bitmoji Kit" allows Bitmoji stickers to be integrated into third-party apps.[167]
Premium accounts and sexual content
In 2014, Snapchat introduced a new feature called Snapcash which spurred its popularity among adult content creators.[172][173]
Snapchat allows private premium accounts in which users can monetize their content.[174] This feature is mostly used by models to monetize their adult content.[174] Snapchat is increasingly becoming an integral part of the online porn industry.[174]
Controversies
December 2013 hack
Snapchat was hacked on December 31, 2013.[175][176] Gibson Security, an Australian security firm, had disclosed an API security vulnerability to the company on August 27, 2013,[177][178] and then made public the source code for the exploit on December 25.[179][180] On December 27, Snapchat announced that it had implemented mitigating features.[181] Nonetheless, an anonymous group hacked them, saying that the mitigating features presented only "minor obstacles".[182][183] The hackers revealed parts of approximately 4.6 million Snapchat usernames and phone numbers on a website named SnapchatDB.info[176][184][185] and sent a statement to the popular technology blog TechCrunch saying that their objective had been to "raise public awareness... and... put public pressure on Snapchat" to fix the vulnerability.[184] Snapchat apologized a week after the hack.[186]
Federal Trade Commission
In 2014, Snapchat settled a complaint made by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The government agency alleged that the company had exaggerated to the public the degree to which mobile app images and photos could actually be made to disappear. Under the terms of the agreement, Snapchat was not fined, but the app service agreed to have its claims and policies monitored by an independent party for a period of 20 years. The FTC concluded that Snapchat was prohibited from "misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users' information."[187]
Following the agreement, Snapchat updated its privacy page to state that the company "can't guarantee that messages will be deleted within a specific timeframe."[188] Even after Snapchat deletes message data from their servers, that same data may remain in backup for a certain period of time.[188] In a public blog post, the service warned that "If you've ever tried to recover lost data after accidentally deleting a drive or maybe watched an episode of CSI, you might know that with the right forensic tools, it's sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted."[189]
Windows app
In November 2014, Snapchat announced a crackdown on third-party apps of its service and their users. Users of the Windows Phone platform were affected, as Snapchat did not have an official client for it, but numerous third-party apps existed, most popularly one called 6snap. In December, Microsoft was forced to remove 6snap and all other third-party apps of Snapchat from the Windows Phone Store; Snapchat however did not develop an official app for the platform, leaving its users on the platform behind.[190] A petition from users requesting an official Snapchat app reached 43,000 signatures in 2015, but the company still refused to respond and to build an app for Windows Phone.[191] Snapchat was criticized once again later in 2015 when it did not develop an app for Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP).[192]
Lens incidents
In September 2015, an 18-year-old was using a Snapchat feature called "Lens" to record the speed she was driving her Mercedes C230 when she crashed into a Mitsubishi Outlander in Hampton, Georgia. The 107 mph (172 km/h) crash injured both drivers. The driver of the Outlander spent five weeks in intensive care while he was treated for severe traumatic brain injury. In April 2016, the Outlander driver sued both Snapchat and the user of Snapchat, alleging that Snapchat knew its application was being used in unlawful speed contests, yet did nothing to prevent such use so is negligent.[193]
In October 2016, a similar collision occurred while a 22-year-old was driving at 115 mph (185 km/h) in Tampa, Florida, killing five people.[194] [195]
"Poor Country" remark
According to former Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano in a lawsuit filed against Snap Inc., Spiegel made a statement in 2015 that Snapchat is "only for rich people" and that he does not "want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain."[196] The incident sparked a Twitter trend called "#UninstallSnapchat", in which Indian users uninstalled the app,[197] and caused backlash against the company, including a large number of low "one-star" ratings for the app in the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store.[198][199] Snapchat's shares fell by 1.5%.[200] In response to the allegation, Snapchat called Pompliano's claim "ridiculous", and elaborated that "Obviously Snapchat is for everyone. It's available worldwide to download for free."[199]
Pompliano Lawsuit
In January 2017, Pompliano filed a state lawsuit accusing Snapchat of doctoring growth metrics with the intention of deceiving investors. Pompliano said that Spiegel was dismissive of his concerns and that Pompliano was fired shortly thereafter. The judge dropped Pompliano's claims that Snapchat violated the Dodd-Frank and Consumer Protection Acts in retaliation against him, citing an arbitration clause in his contract.[201] However, Snap Inc. faced blowback over a lack of disclosure regarding the contents of the lawsuit, resulting in plunging stock prices, several class-action lawsuits, and Federal investigations.[202]
"Snap Map" privacy concerns
The June 2017 release of "Snap Map", a feature that broadcasts the user's location on a map, was met with concerns over privacy and safety. The feature, through an opt-in, delivers a message asking if the user would like to show their position on the map, but reportedly does not explain the ramifications of doing so, including that the app updates the user's position on the map each time the app is opened and not just when actively capturing snaps, potentially assisting stalkers. The map can be zoomed in to feature detailed geographical information, such as street addresses.[203] The Daily Telegraph reported that police forces had issued child safety warnings,[204] while other media publications wrote that safety concerns were also raised for teenagers and adults unaware of the feature's actual behavior.[203][205] In a statement to The Verge, a Snapchat spokesperson said that "The safety of our community is very important to us and we want to make sure that all Snapchatters, parents, and educators have accurate information about how the Snap Map works".[203] Users have the ability to operate in "Ghost Mode", or select the friends that they wish to share their location with. Although there has been an increase in advertising on Snapchat, Snapchat has stated that they do not plan on running ads on Snap Map stories.
Rihanna controversy
In March 2018, an advertisement containing a poll about Rihanna was posted stating, "Would you rather punch Chris Brown or slap Rihanna?"[206] Rihanna tweeted that Snapchat was "insensitive to domestic violence victims" and urged fans to delete Snapchat.[207]
Body image concerns
The increased use of body and facial reshaping applications such as Snapchat and Facetune has been identified as a potential cause of body dysmorphic disorder. In August 2018, researchers from the Boston Medical Center wrote in a JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery essay that a phenomenon they called 'Snapchat dysmorphia' had been identified, where people request surgery to look like the edited version of themselves as they appear through Snapchat Filters.[208]
Snapchat employees abused data access to spy on users
In May 2019, it was revealed that multiple Snapchat employees used an internal tool called SnapLion, originally designed to gather data in compliance with law enforcement requests, to spy on users.[209]
Citing "vague, broad language" in Snapchat's privacy policy, Mozilla issued a September 2019 petition calling for public disclosures related to the app's use of facial emotion recognition technology.[210] When reached for comment by Scientific American, representatives for Snapchat declined to share a public response.[211]
Revenge porn
During the 2020 lockdown to inhibit the spread of COVID-19 in France, the app emerged as a hub for the dissemination of revenge porn of underage girls.[212] Some users have also reported that perpetrators of revenge porn have utilized explicit images to seek sexual favors or powers over individuals. [213]
In 2020, a woman in North Carolina sued Snapchat (as well as dating app Tinder and the five men named in the attack[214]), claiming features of the app enabled her alleged rapist and his friends to hide evidence of the rape. In particular, the suit alleges that "because of the ways Snapchat is and has been designed, constructed, marketed, and maintained, [the woman's assailants] were able to send these nonconsensual, pornographic photographs and videos of [her] with little to no threat of law enforcement verifying that they did so."[215] The woman told the court that parent company Snap Inc. "specifically and purposely designed, constructed, and maintained Snapchat to serve as a secretive and nefarious communications platform that encourages, solicits, and facilitates the creation and dissemination of illicit and non-consensual sexually explicit content...and allowed Snapchat to operate as a safe-haven from law enforcement."[216]
Illinois biometric data lawsuit
Snapchat was the subject of a class action lawsuit from the state of Illinois, alleging that the company violated the Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing biometric data on Illinois residents who used the app's filters and lenses without providing a written explanation on why the data was recorded and what its term of storage would be. The company opted to settle the lawsuit with a $35 million payout.[217]
