Evan Spiegel
We’re coming close to Snapchat’s IPO. The company just rebranded to Snap Inc. and is about to go public.
Evan Spiegel has changed the way millennials publish and consume photos and videos on their phones:-Evan democratized “disposable media.”People older than 25 years old find it normal to save and keep online what they publish on the Internet. Millennials find normal to see it disappear after 24 hours.-Evan set a new standard for posting. On the “old” Instagram people cared a lot about the high quality of the photo. They took time to take it. They tried many filters. SnapChat introduced the opposite. Save a moment fast and post it. Quality is less important than sharing small moments often with friends. It’s less about quality than constant connection with friends. Very different.-Evan changed the way we watch videos from landscape to portrait.Before Snapchat, you looked weird if you posted a video in portrait mode (the way your iPhone screen is, vertical). If you post a video in landscape you now you look like an old person who doesn’t get it. -Evan introduced a new UI that feels weird for most people older than 25, but teenagers love it. It still feels weird to me. Jumping from one screen to another horizontally isn’t natural at all. -Evan made posting photos and videos fun with cool “lenses” everyone loves. These filters are more like augmented reality and are always really innovative. The press just revealed they are working on lenses that recognize and interact with landscapes!
I met Evan a year or two ago and was very impressed by how determined he is that most social apps “don’t get how young people think”.
Given how fast Instagram copied Snapchat’s UI, vertical videos and photos and disposable media, it seems Evan was right. Apparently the new Instagram is becoming a real threat to Snapchat. Note that it also became okay in Silicon Valley to exactly copy a product as fast as possible. The Facebook team even recognized it when they launched the Instagram reinvention.
I have also been very impressed by Snapchat’s spectacles. It does only one thing and does it really well. It records short videos. It is simple and affordable. The way Snapchat launched them — by making them exclusive and hard to find — was excellent.
Snapchat’s creativity and innovation is incredible. Despite the threat Instagram represents, I will buy some stock.
Some news from my own startup Leade.rs -Our leader of the week is the amazing curator of the Louvre Museum, Pamela Golbin, watch her video profile. -We have just posted a cool video with new speakers for our event in Paris April 11–12 we hope to see you there request an invite.
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