Snapchat (PDF)

Snapchat is a photo messaging application which was developed in 2011 by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. It is a new way to take pictures or video adding text or drawings over a mobile phone and send them to friends or family with specifications on how long the photo will be available for viewing. User can set a time of 1 to 10 seconds for the viewing. The timer starts to count down the predefined seconds when the recipient opens the message. After the time is up the picture is deleted from the device and cannot be shown to the user anymore. Once the user downloads the app on his phone it is essential to register with username and set a password. Subsequently the app access the contact list on users phone to load friends. Additionally users can add other contacts beyond the existing one manually. Snapchat is a new way of sharing moments with friends on iPhone and Android.
The company compares its product with a phone call, where a record of the communication persists, however the actual content of the communication does not. Even though Snapchat launched many products, there is one key feature that they all share, deletion. The app's mascot, which is also used as logo, is called "Ghostface Chillah", a name Brown derived from Ghostface Killah of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan.
Snapchat, Inc. is a privately held, venture capital backed company, headquartered in Venice, California, USA. The application was first launched in July 2011 as a result of Evan Spiegel's projects at Stanford University under the name Picaboo. However, the idea of disappearing pictures did not convince other project participants. In July 2011 Picaboo was renamed and re-launched into Snapchat. The former team, Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy, focused on usability and technical aspects rather than branding efforts at the beginning in order to reach as many user as possible [...].