Snapchat Crisis
Avinaba Guha
Vaibhav Jariwala
Ritik Notwani
Yugal Patel
Akash Thorat
Introduction
Snapchat is an American multimedia messaging app
developed by Snap Inc.
One of the principal features of Snapchat is that
pictures and messages are usually only available for
a short time before they become inaccessible to their
recipients.
It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of
end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use
in the future.
Snapchat was created by Evan
Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and
Reggie Brown, former students
at Stanford University.
It has become known for
representing a new, mobile-first
direction for social media, and
places significant emphasis on
users interacting with virtual
stickers and augmented reality
objects.
As of March 2020, Snapchat had
229 million daily active users.
The Crisis
While Indians are increasingly
downloading Snapchat on their
smartphones, the company’s
CEO feels India is “too poor” to
seriously consider expanding
its user base.
According to a report by
Variety, the disparaging
comment was made by the
CEO of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel,
allegedly during a meeting to
discuss the growth of the app’s
user base in 2015.
When an employee raised
concern about the app’s slow
growth in a market like India
which has a growing mobile
penetration, Spiegel cut the
employee mid-sentence saying,
“This app is only for rich
people,” Spiegel said, Variety
quoted the employee’s
revelation. “I don’t want to
expand into poor countries like
India and Spain.”
Tweets and Memes
Main Cause Of The Problem
Snapchat CEO allegedly said India “too
poor” to consider expansion.
According to a report published in Variety,
the CEO while discussing expansion plans
in a meeting allegedly dismissed an
employee's concern of the slow growth rate
of the app in India, stating that the app was
only meant for 'rich people'.
Hashtags like #BoycottSnapchat and
#UninstallSnapchat were trending on
Twitter.
Soon after Variety published the alleged
comment, the app's ratings on Google play
store and other such platforms witnessed a
sharp decline, a 4.4 to a 3.6 rating.
Furthermore, the number of one-star rating
by the users shot up from 39,102 to 192,906
in just 24 hours.
The Impact
A day after news broke out
regarding Snapchat’s CEO Evan
Spiegel’s disinterest in expanding
the business to “poor countries”
like India, the rating of the popular
app dropped to a “single star” from
an apparent “five star” on the App
Store.
Indians did not take the comment
lightly and took to social media to
lash out at the statement from the
CEO. As the ratings of the app
dropped, the criticism of the CEO
and the app increased.
“The Damage Is Done”
The remarks, allegedly made by
Evan Spiegel in a 2015 meeting,
are contained in a recently
unsealed complaint by Anthony
Pompliano, a former employee of
Snap Inc, the parent company of
Snapchat.
Pompliano, who was fired after
working for the social media
company for three weeks in 2015,
is suing Snap Inc in a Californian
court for trying to “destroy his
career and reputation”.
The Comeback
Snap Inc. has come on record to dismiss these
allegations as false.
"This is ridiculous. Obviously Snapchat is for
everyone! It’s available worldwide to download for
free," said the Snap Inc. statement.
It has also alleged that Pompliano worked with
Snapchat for only three weeks, and that these
allegations were nothing but the rants of a
disgruntled employee.
Snapchat?? Snapdeal?!
The boycott movement for
'Snapchat' but caught unaware in
this storm was the Indian e-
commerce portal 'Snapdeal'. Social
media users are mistakenly
downloading Snapdeal app, down
rating its services and threatening
to stop using it.
Timing couldn't have been worse
with Snapdeal trying to evaluate
merger offers from Paytm and
Flipkart. Though the team is yet to
comment on any financial losses
from this confusion, it is dealing
with a flurry of media queries.
Summary
First of all, if we consider that it was really said by Evan Speigel, it was back in
2015, no point of creating an outrage after almost 2 years when this controversy
broke out.
He commented it in a private meeting. No public generalization of India and
Spain was done ever.
It was said to a person who was kicked out of snapchat because of non
performance, strange! I mean what is his credibility? Do we know anything about
him?
While India reacted with fierce, Spain kept calm and concentrated on their own
work ignoring the issue, hence, showing Mr CEO that you are really not worth
our time and energy.
Surely it was illegal to generalize a community if the statement has really been
made. But till something is proved or without a solid proof we shouldn’t react like
this (there is a reason why we are known to be a tolerant nation and we should
stick to it).
Fin.
