Snapchat’s Future Lies in Augmented Reality

And its past and present too.

Courtesy of PC Advisor

Shortly after its debut in 2011 the ephemeral messaging startup Snapchat was attracting an impressive number of users — and media attention. Most of the coverage fixated on the relatively uncomplicated observation that the disappearing nature of messages, together with it’s young demographic, made it the perfect “sexting” app.

Today it’s clear that the company and its user base have matured.

In 2013, Snapchat rejected Facebook’s $3B acquisition offer, and is now valued between $10–20B, depending on the source (Twitter’s market cap is ~$17.3B). It is experiencing improbable rates of users acquisition, activity, and fundraising.

Every day, 100M users reach for a goofy yellow ghost icon where they become immersed in snapshots of friends’ lives, Diplo and Skrillex’s new music, or curated content from the likes of Vice, CNN, National Geographic, and ESPN. This translates to 6 billion video views per day on the platform, a figure quickly approaching Facebook’s 8 billion daily video views.

Nobody seems to know what to think about all of this, but it is clear that Snapchat is gunning for the top spot in 2016 and beyond. According to CEO Evan Spiegel, 70% of it’s engineers are working on new products, some of which will continue to change digital communications as we know them.

If Snapchat is here to stay, then I want to analyze its product and market strategy, not the gossip and buzz swirling around it. This is my take on Snapchat’s experimentation with Augmented Reality (AR) and why it’s not a sideshow for the company, but a core feature of the platform.