Snap Inc Popular Books

Snap Inc Biography & Facts

Snap Inc. is a technology company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was named Snapchat Inc. at its inception, but it was rebranded Snap Inc. on September 24, 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.The founders own a combined 95% of voting shares (Spiegel with 48% and Murphy with 47%), which are undiluted and transferable to the other when one retires or dies. History The company was founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy upon the relaunch of the photo sharing app Picaboo as Snapchat. On December 31, 2013, the application was hacked and 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers were leaked to the Internet.By January 2014, the company had refused offers of acquisition, including overtures from Mark Zuckerberg, with Spiegel commenting that "trading that for some short-term gain isn’t very interesting."In May 2014, the company acquired the software company AddLive to provide needed technology to create a new video chat feature. In that same month, it settled U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges over its having misled users regarding its collection of their address book data and transmission of their locations (without notice or consent), and regarding its claim that user messages disappeared after their expiration (rather than remaining accessible, as they had). In December, the company acquired Vergence Labs for $15 million in cash and stock, who were the developers of Epiphany Eyewear, and the mobile app Scan for $50 million, which was revealed during the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.In May 2015, the company moved from its original headquarters to a 47,000 ft2 (4,366 m2) office complex near Venice Beach and signed a 10-year lease. They were one of the first prominent online platforms to establish themselves there, alongside others such as Whisper and Tinder, giving Venice the new title of "Silicon Beach." In February 2017, two weeks before the company's IPO, The New York Times published a feature about Snap's role in turning the area into a technology hub, noting that Snap, with a total of 1,900 employees, had "already changed the face of Venice."In September 2015, Snapchat acquired Looksery to develop Lenses for its mobile app, a feature based on Looksery's facial recognition software.In March, July, and August 2016, the company acquired Bitstrips for $100 million, Obvious Engineering, the developers of Seene, for an undisclosed amount and Vurb for $100 million. Vurb formerly developed the eponymous mobile search engine. The Vurb card-based engine removed the need to switch through multiple other applications on the device to perform a task.In September 2016, the company officially named itself Snap Inc., and unveiled smartglasses known as Spectacles. In November 2016, the company filed documents for an initial public offering (IPO) with an estimated market value of $25–35 billion. In December 2016, the company opened research and development in Shenzhen and acquired advertising and technology company Flite and Israel-based augmented reality startup Cimagine Media for $30–40 million. A partnership issued in December 2016 with Turner Broadcasting System will allow integration of Turner properties on Snapchat, while cooperating with Snap Inc. to develop original content.In January 2017, the company announced that it had established an international headquarters in Soho, London. In early February 2017, the company confirmed their plans for an IPO in 2017 and its expectation to raise $3 billion. In early March 2017, the company went public under the trading symbol SNAP, and raised almost $30 billion in market capitalization on the first day of trading.In late May 2017, the company acquired the location sharing app Zenly in a cash and stock deal. The Zenly app will remain functional, but its concepts were incorporated into a Snapchat feature added in June 2017.In August 2017, Business Insider reported that Google discussed an offer to buy the company for $30 billion in early 2016.In October 2017, the company announced that it had formed a joint venture with NBCUniversal to produce content for Snap's platforms, and that it had signed Duplass Brothers Productions as its first partner.In November 2017, Tencent acquired a 12% non-voting minority equity stake of the company in the open market.On October 26, 2018, at TwitchCon, Snap launched a new desktop application for macOS and Windows known as Snap Camera. It allows users to utilize Snapchat filters via PC webcams in video chat and live streaming services such as Skype, Twitch, YouTube, and Zoom. Snap also announced additional integration with Twitch.In August 2022, The Verge reported that Snap would be laying off 20% of its 6,400-person workforce. The layoffs primarily impacted the company's hardware division and the developer products including the separately run Zenly.On 5 February 2024, Snap Inc. announced it would lay off 10% of its global workforce, approximately 500 employees, partly to enhance in-person collaboration, marking another significant reduction following a 20% staff cut in 2022. Products The company develops and maintains the image messaging and multimedia mobile app Snapchat, as well as develops and manufactures the wearable camera called Spectacles, a pair of smartglasses that connect to the user's Snapchat account and records videos in a circular video format adjustable in any orientation. On February 20, 2017, Snap Spectacles became available for purchase online. The company sold only 220,000 pairs of Snap Spectacles V1. The company developed and launched Spectacles V2 in April 2018 in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and France; and 13 more European countries in May 2018. On April 28, 2022, the company announced a mini drone called Pixy. Later that year in August, it was reported that future development of Pixy would be discontinued, while continuing to sell the current iteration of the drone. Funding and shares Snapchat app raised $485,000 in its seed round and an undisclosed amount of bridge funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. By February 2013, Snapchat confirmed a $13.5 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark, which valued the company at between $60 million and $70 million. In June 2013, Snapchat raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by venture capital firm Institutional Venture Partners. The firm also appointed a new high-profile board member, Michael Lynton of Sony's American division. By mid-July 2013, a media report valued the company at $860 million. On November 14, 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook offered to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion, but Spiegel declined the cash offer. Tech writer Om Malik then claimed on November 15, 2013, that Google had offered $4 billion, but Spiegel again declined.... Discover the Snap Inc popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Snap Inc books.