What's Next for Snapchat?!

In September 2011, three Stanford University students had just released one of the most popular social media apps in history after six months of planning and designing. Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown all worked on the application as a project for one of Spiegel's classes, where his classmates balked at the idea of sending photos and videos to people for a specific amount of time and then being erased from existence. The creator experienced immediate success with the public and within a year, twenty-million 'snaps' were being sent each day even though Snapchat was only expose to iOS users. In November 2012, Snapchat was introduced to Android and had gained full exposure over the operating systems. Over the next two years the app rapid growth as the brand became popular all around the globe where in August of 2014 it was valued at $10 billion. Acknowledging the fact that Snapchat is a free service, the company needed to start building their revenue stream, which saw the first paid advertisement open up on users' devices. The advertisement aired in October 2014 in the form of a 20 second movie trailer for the horror film Ouija. While we aren't fond of the pop-up or sidebar advertisements on the world wide web, Snapchat Inc. explained their reasons about the advertisements with; "We want to see if we can deliver an experience that's fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted."

Readers, you may remember my post on the 'Discover' feature of Snapchat. This feature was introduced in January of 2015 and has since been generating revenue for the company from the ad partners of well known organisations; News.com, CNN, MTV, Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan, Food Network, National Geographic, People, Vice, Fox Sports, and Fusion. The material on the channels within the feature are viewed around one million times per day and with an estimated ten to fifteen cents per view, this is Snapchats first major, for-profit, interface feature.

Snapchat Inc. has a current estimated value at $15 billion and with the newly founded revenue generating feature and the current popularity of over 100 million active users sending over one billion photos or videos per day, What's next for this trending brand or has it reached its full potential?

Time will tell as to whether they will follow down the path of making their own content rather than having the content entirely user produced. Similarly, Youtube and Tumblr have recognised the potential behind creating their own content and transitioning into a media company as the success of Netflix and Amazon have shown that it can be done, and to also move forward in gaining competitive advantage over other competitors.

Companies and Nations Capitalize on Snapchat trend

In his article 'how 12 brands used Snapchat', Jeff Beer explains how companies are running social media marketing campaigns on the platform of Snapchat. Jeff includes the statistics behind the market share of social media and that Snapchat holds a quite substantial piece of that pie; 50% penetration to be exact in the 18-24 year old category. The following link contains Jeff's article:
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3033793/how-12-brands-used-snapchat

Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers campaigning for Mcdonald's.

In addition, more organisations have recently entered into Snapchat campaigns since Jeff Beer's article has been published.
Some recent organisations using Snapchat include:
-Marriott Hotels' was a first for any Hotel brand to use the app for marketing campaigns;
-Lacoste clothing brand;
-Call of Duty video game by Activision;
-UNICEF humanitarian and developmental assistance organisation for children and mothers in developing countries.

The company campaigns on Snapchat are very innovative and an effective method of mass marketing by utilizing the popular app. Furthermore, nations are now tapping into the Live feed of the Snapchat app to promote themselves with stories of tourist attractions and anything that will appeal to the world. Today's live feed features Dublin, Ireland; containing all the wonderful city has to offer.

If you are a Snapchat user and have seen these live stream updates from nations around the world, does it increase your desire to travel there?

NBA live stream

Attention Snapchat users, you can find your NBA highlights and results from Snapchats live feed. 

The story features all the opening games of the NBA finals series and is increasing the exposure of the sport through mass marketing. 

Check it out if you haven't already. 

The Socceroos World Cup qualifying

The road to the World Cup 2018 in Russia has been announced. 

The Socceroos' group has been drawn with Kyrgkstan first on Ange Postecoglou's schedule. Also in the Asian World Cup Group B are Bangladesh, Jordan and Taijkstan. 

Ange seemed to be pleased with the draw for the qualifiers as the highest FIFA ranking opponent in the group is at 102, which is Jordan. 

Through the group stage there could be a chance that the youngsters of the Socceroos squad could gain some caps under their belt to assist in increasing the squads depth. 

This news story was brought to you by Fox Sports on the discover section of Snapchat. The utilisation of the discover section of Snapchat has increased the exposure for the participating brands. Fox Sports currently has easy to access stories that have short video clips of the story, all for the convenience of the Snapchat users. 

The New Call Of Duty Teaser On Snapchat

2015 see's a new edition to the 'Call Of Duty' video game brand.

Developers of the game, Activision, have placed a teaser for the highly anticipated new development on an unlikely platform, Snapchat.

A sneaky Snapchat ghost has been spotted by players in multiplayer mode of Black Ops 2 on the new update. This is creating hype and players can actually scan the emblem on their televisions by using the Snapchat app on mobile devices. The emblem's code automatically adds the Call Of Duty Snapchat account so users can keep updated with Activision's developments on their new edition of the video game.

The approach of Activision to use Snapchat as the social media platform to market their up-and-coming product is innovative and effective. The app is widely used around the world as I've previously discussed in my previous post of 'Live Stream Infiltration'.

Happy Easter

This weekend around the world, Snapchat is consumed by the festivities that occur on this weekend. 

The live feed of Snapchat presents lengthy stories of Easter within Los Angeles, New York City and St. Lucia. 

This is an effective way to market these cities through the avenue of social media. 

Well done and it's a good promotion as it makes me want to venture to that part of the world.