Evan Spiegel explained to Snap employees this week that they work for a slightly odd social media platform as it “makes people happy”.
In an internal memo sent on Monday, the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat’s parent company seemed intent on conveying to his staff a certain sense of “urgency”after having seen several quarters of stagnant growth, layoffs and headaches regarding the company’s advertising business.
“Social media is dead. Long live Snapchat!“, was the title of the statement sent by Spiegel.
The CEO said the company had “reached a real inflection point,” while lashing out at vaguely mentioned rivals such as Facebook and Instagram — Meta’s platforms — and X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
“This year is an opportunity to build on all the momentum we have built up and realize our full potential,” Spiegel said in the statement, which was obtained by Business Insider.
The entrepreneur highlighted the specific work carried out by Snap’s data science, content, augmented reality and monetization teams, since they have had the objective of improving the company’s performance for users and advertisers.
Priorities for early 2024
For at least the first half of 2024, he has announced that Snap will focus on undertaking “several critical projects” that he believes are “essential” to his long-term success. These include:
- Shifting focus to further user growth in developed markets such as North America and Europe.
- Promote a “more iOS-centric approach.”
- New efforts to improve ad targeting and performance.
- And the unification of “content and ad interactions” across Spotlight and Stories, Snapchat’s core features, with vertical swipe navigation.”
Succeeding in these goals, Spiegel said, is necessary for Snap to be in the financial position it wants to further push its augmented reality products.
“The moment is important, hence the urgency, because Augmented reality glasses will gain momentum before the end of the decade “And this is our opportunity to transcend the limitations of the smartphone and deliver a more sensational and shared technological experience,” said Snap’s CEO.
“We need our business to be strong and profitable enough to deliver the future of augmented reality technology,” he added.
Attacking his rivals
Towards the end of the statement, Spiegel has dedicated a few words to its main competitorsThe entrepreneur has traced back to the founding of Snapchat more than a decade ago, saying he and Bobby Murphy wanted to build “an antidote to the online popularity contest that started with MySpace, evolved into Facebook and eventually became Instagram.”
A Snap spokesperson has rejected the request for Business Insider to comment, saying only that during Spiegel’s appearance at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the CEO had already mentioned his intention to revamp the platform.
“Bobby and I grew up with social media, MySpace, Facebook and then Instagram, and We felt the constant pressure to be perfect on the internet “We wanted to get likes and comments, to increase our number of followers, and we just wanted something that we could use to have fun with our friends and family,” Spiegel said during the event.
But in a statement sent to his staff on Monday, he went a step further. The entrepreneur positioned Snapchat as a social network that offers “happiness,” specifically to teenagers, through its messaging features and focus on close relationships.
This Tuesday, Meta announced new features for Instagram and Facebook aimed at improving the experience of users under 18 years of ageat a time of increased scrutiny over the mental health issues of American teenagers, who are affected by Instagram content in particular.
The company faces dozens of lawsuits over the matter.
Spiegel seemed to be referring to other problems that Meta platforms present, such as child sexual abuse materialas well as alluding to the problems faced by social networks such as X, with the moderation of content surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas.
“We are certainly far from perfect, but while our competitors are connecting pedophiles, fueling insurrection and recommending terrorist propaganda, we know that Snapchat makes people happy,” the entrepreneur said.
At Blind, a job platform where users’ workplaces are verified and only those who have worked for the organization in question can comment, Snap workers have expressed their frustration given the way Spiegel talks about its competitors, specifically Meta.
“Evan’s hatred of Meta is clearly evident in most of the communications he sends,” one employee said.
You can read the full statement sent by Spiegel here:
Social media is dead. Long live Snapchat!
Dear team,
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a chance to rest and recharge over the holidays. We have a lot of work ahead of us in 2024. After years of battling numerous challenges, including the pandemic, social media policy changes, and economic turmoil, while also facing tough competitors and changing regulations, I believe we have reached a true turning point. This year, we have the opportunity to take all the momentum we have built and realize our full potential.
Much of the progress we’ve made lately has been the result of focusing intently on who we are and the role we play in people’s lives: giving people the ability to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together. Snapchat enhances our relationships with friends, family, and the world.
When we help people improve their relationships, our business grows. For example, our product, growth, and data science teams have developed a new methodology for determining Close Friends on Snapchat and are using it to build features that are more likely to foster Close Friendships. People who have Close Friends on Snapchat are more likely to retain them for longer periods of time, so when we help people find and connect with Close Friends, we support the happiness and well-being of our community while growing our business.
Relationships are at the heart of everything we do. Our content team has used relationship insights to recommend content in Spotlight that people want to share with their close friends. Our monetization teams are focused on helping advertisers build relationships with the right customers. Our augmented reality teams have created a new framework for ranking Lenses that favors Lenses that people want to send to their friends.
The first half of this year brings together several critical projects that we consider essential to our long-term success:
First, we continue to develop our machine learning models to better differentiate advertising interactions across our platform. Our efforts last year demonstrated that evolving our models to drive more post-click engagement reduces wasteful spend and improves performance for advertisers. This year, we’re extending these insights to all of our advertising targets.
Second, we’re unifying content and ad interactions across Spotlight and Stories to reduce confusion. This means that both Stories and Spotlight will feature vertical swipe navigation, with a consistent call to action to link to long-form content or engage with ads. These unified interactions will also allow us to combine content inventory and ranking across Spotlight and Stories, improving the likelihood that we can recommend the right personalized content for each Snapchat user.
Finally, we are putting more focus on user growth in our developed markets like North America and Europe. Over the past few years, we have driven tremendous daily active user growth by focusing on Android performance in large countries like India. We will continue to build on our momentum in high-opportunity countries in APAC, while also increasing our investment in improving the product experience for our community in North America and Europe. This requires a more focused approach to iOS in these regions and a continued focus on helping our community connect with their best friends, especially for people who use our service monthly but not daily.
We believe that focusing on these three projects will help us improve performance for advertisers, deepen engagement with content, and increase daily active usage of Snapchat, which will ultimately accelerate our revenue growth and increase free cash flow. The timing is important, hence the urgency, because AR glasses will gain momentum before the end of the decade and this is our opportunity to transcend the limitations of the smartphone and deliver a more sensational, shared technology experience. We need our business to be strong and profitable enough to deliver the future of AR technology.
Thirteen years ago Bobby and I set out to build something different. We wanted a way to communicate that was fast, fun and expressive. An antidote to the online popularity contest that started with MySpace, evolved into Facebook and eventually became Instagram.
In 2012, we declared we were building something different to capture the full range of human emotion, not just what’s pretty or perfect. Then in 2017, we separated social from media to strengthen relationships with friends. In 2024, we’re on the cusp of another personal technology revolution that started with the desktop, evolved into the smartphone, and is becoming wearable with Spectacles, our augmented reality glasses.
We’re certainly far from perfect, but while our competitors are connecting pedophiles, fueling insurrection and recommending terrorist propaganda, we know that Snapchat makes people happy. New research released today by…