Company’s profile
Snap Inc. is a camera company, incorporated on May 24, 2012. The company is located in Donald Douglas, Loop North SANTA MONICA CA 90405. Its flagship product, Snapchat, is a smartphone camera application which is used for communication through images and short videos. Snap Inc., through the Snapchat app, offers a range of creative tools including spectacles, memories, Friends Page, Discover and Snap Maps, which enables users to personalize and customize videos and pictures. Additionally, Snap Inc. also offers chat services including creating and watching stories, making voice and video calls, group chats as well as through a range of Bitmojis and Stickers. Moreover, Snapchat users can share their location, view nearby friends, and create snaps and stories from their saved snaps. Snap Inc. is as well engaged in advertising business through its advertising products; snap Ads and Sponsored Creative Tools. Company history
Snapchat was created in 2011 by former Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. Its first incarnation was during Spiegel presentation as part of his product design class. Initially, Snapchat was launched in July 2011 as an app called Picaboo but was later rebranded as Snapchat a few months later after the company received a cease letter from a photobook company which shared the same name. Between December 2012 and November 2014, the company was primarily focused on product build -out, user base acquisition, and funding. During this period, Snapchat raises funds amounting to $143.5 million, and the userbase grows significantly with 400 million snaps sent every day by November 2013. Moreover, during this period, key features such as video sharing, ephemeral text messaging, and Snapchat stories are added to the company’s, product, Snapchat. From December 2014- August 2014, the company is focused on aggressive funding, video, and more product iterations. More than 2 billion dollars was raised, and with a considerable amount of funds, the company aggressively improved the products, including the introduction of new monetization strategies, stickers. From May 2015- November 2015, daily video views had grown from 2 billion to 6 billion and 10 billion by 2016. In 2017, the company made initial public Offering, and since then the company has been primarily focused on rebranding and product development. Initially, the company started in California, where the founders launched the app, and students started using the app as a convenient communication method. Formerly Known as Picaboo, Snapchat was the initial Snap Inc. product which has been developed, redesigned and rebranded to its present-day Snapchat app.
CEO
Even Spiegel is the CEO, co-founder and the Director of Snap Inc. he holds a B.S. in Engineering – Product Design from Stanford University and has served in the position of company’s CEO and a member of Board of Directors since May 2012. Spiegel receives a basic Total Annual Compensation of $800,846 exclusive of long term incentives and Restricted Stock Awards. Spiegel is a Key decision maker in the company and plays an active role in both managerial and technical operations. Spiegel and company’s Chief Technology Officer, Bobby Murphy established Snap Foundation through which they will donate funds to Non-Profit Arts, Youth Program and Education. The co-founders have pledged to donate 13M shares of class A common stock over the next 15 to 20 years, which translates to millions of dollars considering that the company is valued at 25 dollars.
Competitors
Facebook is one of the biggest competitors of Snapchat. Both of the companies are social media firms which continuously compete against each other by improving their products to gain a significant market share.
Competition chart
Features offered
Snapchat
Snap Ads
Filters
Lenses
Full-screen vertical video ads with attachments
Audio
Create & manage campaigns
300+ predefined audiences
Demographics
Audience match
Build custom audiences
Drag and drop customer lists
Tune performance
Geofilters
Ad manager
Snap publisher (video editing suite)
Multiple ad types
Objectives
Set budget
Schedule and run campaigns
Measure and optimize campaigns
Draw geofence
Campaign dashboard
Performance tracking
Campaign results
Creative library
Custom Audiences
Instant messaging
Video streaming
Newsfeed
Friends
Wall
Timeline
Reactions
Messages and Inbox
Notification
Groups
Events
Marketplace
Notes
Places
Platform
Facebook questions
Photos
Videos
Facebook Paper
Facebook mentions
Mood faces
Live to stream
Poke
Snapchat strength and weakness compared to Facebook
Regarding advertisement, Snapchat is well way ahead of Facebook. Snapchat integrates advertisement on its business model such that sponsored geofilters, filters, lenses, etc. are embedded in a manner that users will interact with advertisement without realizing they aided the company in making more money. In contrast, Facebook users can easily distinguish advertisement and regular posts and thus tend to ignore ads. However, Snapchat is at the moment focused on younger demographic groups between the age of 18-34 and has not penetrated across every age group as compared to Facebook. Moreover, for Snapchat to expand and be ubiquitous, they will have to overhaul its interface, educate people on app use and market to older generations.
Instagram is another major competitor of Snapchat, which is interestingly becoming increasingly similar to snap chat. However, the two apps are different regarding features and interface and content.
Instagram Vs. Snapchat features
Snapchat
Image editing
Location tagging
Private messaging
Commenting
@mentions
Push notifications
Group messaging
Hashtags
Filters
Video editing tools
Text & drawing tools
Live video streaming
Stories feature
Disappearing photos & videos
Search functionality
User tagging
User profiles
Public & private profiles
Snap Ads
Filters
Lenses
Full-screen vertical video ads with attachments
Audio
Create & manage campaigns
300+ predefined audiences
Demographics
Audience match
Build custom audiences
Drag and drop customer lists
Tune performance
Geofilters
Ad manager
Snap publisher (video editing suite)
Multiple ad types
Objectives
Set budget
Schedule and run campaigns
Measure and optimize campaigns
Draw geofence
Campaign dashboard
Performance tracking
Campaign results
Creative library
Custom Audiences
Instant messaging
Video streaming
Snapchat strength and weakness as compared to Snapchat
Comparing snapshot to Instagram, snap Inc. has more filters, which makes it more interesting. From bunny faces, pug faces, flower crowns, Snapchat have a collection of most creative and fun filters. Nonetheless, the inability to share links or tag people in Snapchat is its great weakness when compared to Instagram. The limited search functionality of Snapchat limits users from searching and the following someone as it is on Instagram.
Performance analysis
Six months
Snap Inc. stock price has steadily gone up for the last six months, nearly doubling from $5.79 to $13. 87 in June 2019. The steady and consistent rise in Snapchat stock price is due to the increased anticipation of a new Android app rollout, more monetization opportunities, and promising ROI for Advertisers.
One year
In June 2018, the Snapchat stock price stood at an average of $14.05, but the prices fell in the subsequent months reaching the lowest in December the same year when the stock price was $4.99. In the following months, the stock market price has consistently risen and stood at $13.87 as of 6/8/2019. The almost 60% decline in Snap Inc. stock was mainly due to user defections after the company redesigned the Snapchat app, and which was exacerbated by celebrities such as Kyler Kardashian tweeting on their disappointment with the updated Snapchat app. Moreover, increased competition from Facebook and Instagram contributed to the decline in the company’s stock value. The rise in the stock market price as from December 2018 to date can be attributed to the factors indicated in the six months stock analysis performance.
Five years
Snapchat was first made public in 2nd March 2017, and thus the company’s stock only dates two years back. The stock prices were on all-time high standing at $27.09 on the day the company was made public. However, since then, the company has faced a series of rising and fall in stock prices. However, the initial stock price is the highest to date owing to aggressive competition from other social media apps, bad publicity, and unwelcomed app redesign and updates.