From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative

Snapchat is a real-time social media application created by Stanford Univeristy students, Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. The photo-based application creates a platform for images and videos to be created and then altered by the addition of filters, text and drawings. These images, which are referred to as “Snaps” can then be distributed to a network of friends for a selected duration of time between 1 and 10 seconds. Recent updates to the application allow for the images to be saved to a timeline called My Story and remain visible to friends for up to 24 hours. Over 400 million “Snaps” are sent and received every day ^[1] and the application's growing user interface is maintaining SnapChat’s personal motto for “building a photo app that doesn’t conform to unrealistic notions of beauty or perfection but rather creates a space to be funny, honest or whatever else you might feel like at the moment you take and share a Snap.”^[2]

History

Snapchat was first launched in July 2011 as Picaboo, the name was shortly rebranded as Snapchat during the same year. In 2012 the application was released on Android devices shortly followed by an Apple ISO release.^[3] The application quickly grew in popularity and by late 2013 the first major update to the application was launched. The update enhanced the speed and design of the application allowing for swipe navigation, double-tap to reply for users and an improved friend finder - creating a more fluid interface. ^[4]