Snapchat

Snapchat's founding story has a rather interesting story. Snapchat's originators Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy developed the app while they were students at Stanford University.

In 2011, while at Spiegel's father's birthday party, an idea came to him. He decided to make an application where he could temporarily share photos that he could share with his friends. This would be the perfect solution to stop people's embarrassing photos from permanently circulating on the internet.

Bobby Murphy believed in Spiegel's idea and they started working together. First, they created a prototype with the name "Picaboo". However, they later changed their name to Snapchat.

The app was initially popular with Stanford University students. However, it soon spread to other universities as well. The application attracted people's attention with its feature that shared photos can be viewed for only a few seconds. This feature made the app different from other social media platforms.

With the rapid growth and popularity of Snapchat, Spiegel and Murphy have managed to grab the attention of many investors. The first investment came in 2012, and then other investors started investing in the app. Currently, Snapchat is worth billions of dollars and is used by millions of people around the world.

In 2012, Snapchat held its first investment round and received $485,000 from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Later, other investors started to invest in the app as well. Snapchat raised $60 million in 2013 from major investors like Benchmark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, and General Catalyst Partners.

As Snapchat's value skyrocketed, it began to attract the attention of larger investors. In 2014, Alibaba Group wanted to invest in Snapchat with a valuation of $10 billion, but Snapchat turned down the offer.

In 2016, Snapchat went public and became a public company. The IPO took place at a time when the company was valued at $24 billion. However, after the IPO, the company's shares experienced fluctuations.

To summarize, there is no exact number of how many people have invested in Snapchat, but the company has received billions of dollars in total investment from many investors since its inception.

Snapchat's most popular and active features:

Sending Photos and Videos: Snapchat allows users to send photos and videos to their friends. Posted photos and videos can be viewed by friends for a few seconds and then automatically deleted.

Stories: Snapchat stories allow photos and videos that users share with each other to be viewable for 24 hours.

Filters: Snapchat filters are items such as graphics, stickers, and animations that users add to their photos or videos.

Bitmoji: Bitmoji is a feature that allows users to create a customized avatar to represent themselves. These avatars can then be used in Snapchat posts.

Face swapping: Snapchat's face swapping feature allows users to change their own and their friends' faces.

Group chats: Users can start a group chat on Snapchat and talk to their friends as a group.

Discover: Discover allows users to discover content from celebrities, news organizations and other publishers.

Maps: Maps is a feature that shows users where their friends are and what they are doing. This feature allows users to track the location of their friends.

Snapchat is especially popular with young people. Many of the app's features allow users' posts to be automatically deleted, which allows many users to post private or shy content.

It is known that Snapchat was originally designed as just a messaging app but later its features were expanded. In particular, features such as stories, filters and Bitmoji were added later.

Snapchat was originally called "Pictaboo" but later changed to "Snapchat".

The app's direct competitors include Instagram's stories feature and video-focused social media apps like TikTok.

Snapchat provides advertising space for some large companies and brands. These ads are used by companies that want to reach their target audience more directly.

Snapchat has also been the subject of occasional controversy. In particular, the privacy policies of the application and the ability to save users' posts have caused criticism.