Why is Snapchat a camera company, even before they started selling Spectacles?

Snapchat IPO

Today, all eyes are on Snapchat. On its first day of trading, SNAP soared nearly 50%. And it's only the beginning.

3 Reasons Why Snapchat is a Camera Company

In its public filings, and on its corporate website, Snap refers to itself as “a camera company.” But what that actually means is open to some creative interpretation. Here's mine.

1. When it comes to consumer psychology, Snapchat is in a class of its own.

A camera product involves two parties of users, the one behind the lens and the one in front - or shall I add, traditionally speaking. Snapchat is the camera company that perfectly merged the two into one. Guess what, it happens to be (almost) everyone's most interested subject: I, me and myself. 

Instagram filters make me look as cute as the kitten in the Youtube video who just got another 10k views today. 

Said no one ever. You get the point.

2. Snapchat's monetization model seamlessly make ads engagement part of the product usage flow. 

The last company that did that? Google search engine. Machine learning has made personalized ads possible, but displayed ads still require users to disengage with whatever product they are using at the time in order to pay attention to the served ads, needless to say to engage with the ads they'll start a separate action flow which takes them away from their ongoing core product usage. Makes sense to me that Google has quietly invested in Snapchat not too long ago. 

3. Snapchat's product consumption is not dependent on network effect to be successful. 

Of course social features make a product more sticky, but the core value provided by snapchat is entertainment, to be consumed by one or more. It is the go-to-app of my 6-year-old's every time he manages to snatch my phone from me. He tries out each filter and make a video or two, and later on keep watching these videos for some more time. A valid use case.

Now get ready for the camera company that has 158 million daily active user, creating and exchanging 2.5 billion snaps per day, 10 billion daily video view. These numbers give me goosebumps.


Read another 2 minute case study on Pinterest.

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