It’s the social media acquisition that for whatever reason, just hasn’t happened yet. For several years, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has been attempting to lure popular photo-messaging app Snapchat away from the grasp of its creators. He is willing to pay through the nose for it too; way back in 2013 (when Snapchat was only two years old), he famously offered Snap Inc $3b to take it from their grasp and they controversially declined.
Since then, Zuckerberg has attempted to emulate the success of Snapchat on Facebook by shamelessly reproducing some of Snapchat’s most prominent features on his own social media app. It was no surprise to avid Snapchat users then, when the ability to post ‘Stories’ (a photo-update available to friends for 24 hours) appeared on Facebook too, as well as the filters that users can customize such photos with.
Is it time to give up the ghost?
Facebook’s continued saturation of Snapchat has become increasingly blatant in the years following the 2013 offer, when Zuckerberg added the Stories feature to Instagram – yet another photo sharing app that Facebook acquired in 2012 for the bargain price of $1bn. Seriously though – how many of these photo sharing apps do we need?
Quite why Facebook is so interested in purchasing Snapchat now is interesting, especially as the latter is allegedly in the midst of a ‘really bad time’, according to some sources. Some techie gurus are suggesting that if Snapchat really do not want to sell their souls to the devil (they really have something against being bought out for billions) they should increase their advertising.
Currently, Snapchat’s advertising is struggling to work to its advantage because users will only receive an avoidable advert between stories. Revenue is also generated from specially designed Snap filters designed to promote brands, films or current events, but with the company remaining stubbornly independent, one has to wonder whether this is enough. Perhaps it would be better for Snaphchat to give up the ghost and sell up.
Or maybe it would be better to just combine all of them into one app called Instasnapbook…
