There are tons of social media platforms in today’s world. But there are only a few popular ones that people all over the world use. You will not like these social media platforms if all of them are the same. It is their different features that make them more interesting and fun. A couple of decades ago all of this was not available. There was no concept of social media platforms. When they arrived the first social media platforms were not like how they are today. They only acted as a medium through which they could share their information and nothing more than that. But the way they evolved is something that no one has imagined. People who have used the early social media platforms would have never thought that they would be using them every day. All of this was possible because of social media platforms like Facebook.
It really changed the way people viewed social networking sites. People stopped seeing social media platforms as a medium to share information instead they started to see them as a medium to connect with people all over the world. Everyone fell in love with this concept of being able to reach out to anyone from anywhere in the world. You can be at the remotest corner of your country but you can still keep in touch with your friend who lives in a different country using social media platforms. All of you know about some popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter because they have been around for a long time. But there are some social media platforms that came into the picture recently which became quite famous. One such social media application is Snapchat. Snapchat is the latest love of people who have been using social media for a long time. It became popular very quickly but people still don’t know much about it. Many people don’t know who owns the application. This article will tell you about that. But before that let’s know a little bit about the company.
Page Contents
History of Snapchat
This social media platform was founded by Reggie Brown, Evan Spiegel, and Bobby Murphy. The idea was first introduced by Reggie Brown. He thought that there should be a platform where people could post pictures that would disappear after some time. They wanted to go forward with this idea and wanted to create an application that will have this feature. Evan Spiegel has business experience but not coding. So they wanted someone who is good at coding. This is when Bobby Murphy came into the picture. But Snapchat was not the initial name given to the application. It was first launched on the iOS store with the name Picaboo. The name was changed to Snapchat when the app was relaunched in the year 2011. This time the application was more efficient and offered a better user experience. Not only that but the mascot of the company was changed. It was designed by Brown who named it Ghostface chillah which was inspired by the rapper Ghostface Killah from the famous rap group Wu-Tang Clan.
The journey was not as smooth as people would assume. There was a lot of internal conflict going on between the founders of the company. All of it started when Reggie Brown wanted to discuss his equity in the company. The company lawyers said that Reggie Brown did not have any creative contribution to the company. They also accused Brown of falsely claiming to be the inventor of Snapchat. All of that was over when Reggie Brown settled for $157 million dollars and recognized one of the original founders. By the end of November in 2012 people had already shared more than one billion photos on Snapchat. Everyday users were sharing more than 20 million photos on Snapchat. Due to the increase in user base, Snapchat was facing some difficulty in scalability. They released an updated version in 2013 which was not only better but also had more features.
Snapchat also released Snapkidz for users under 13 years. By the end of 2015 people sharing more than 6 billion videos per day. All e the videos shared on Snapchat had more than 10 billion views per day by 2016. During that time Snapchat had more than 10 million active users in the United Kingdom alone. In 2017 it had more than 166 million users. Snapchat faced severe backlash from the users and other people when the company tried to announce a new update. This is because the update made the application very complicated. It was very hard for people to find send and re-watch snaps. To increase its video creation capabilities Snapchat acquired AI Factory this year in January. It had also announced that it will pay users who create viral content.
Who owns Snapchat?
This is the part that all of you have been waiting for. As you already know Snapchat like many other companies is a public company. The company went public in 2017. So their many people who share of the company. Here you are going to learn about the top individual and institutional shareholders of the company. Let’s take a look at the individual stakeholders first.
Bobby Murphy
Bobby Murphy who came up with the original idea of disappearing pictures owns most shares of the company as an individual. Murphy was the chief technology officer since the company was founded. Murphy owns nearly 88 million shares of Snapchat directly. Apart from that he also owns 5.86 million shares through a trust. The net worth of Bobby Murphy is 2.9 billion dollars.
Evan Spiegel
If you have heard any big names from Snapchat then you must have heard about Evan Spiegel. He made headlines when he turned down the offer of Mark Zuckerberg who wanted to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion dollars. The story Evan Spiegel is not a rags to riches one though. He was born into a wealthy family where his parents made great money. He is the one who represents Snapchat at public forums. Evan Spiegel personally owns 81 million shares of Snapchat and indirectly owns an additional 5.8 million shares through a trust. The net worth of Evan Spiegel is 1.6 billion dollars.
Imran Khan
Though he is not one of the original founders he owns more shares after Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. He is the one who is responsible for organizing the IPO of Alibaba in 2014. Imran Khan has served as the chief strategy officer of Snapchat till 2018. He owns 7.9 million shares of Snapchat.
Now that you have learned more about the individual stakeholders of Snapchat let’s look at the institutional shareholders of the company.
T.Rowe Price
This is a global investment management company. It is a firm that deals mainly with account management, retirement plans, and other services for individuals as well as institutions. It is a company that has more than 1.3 trillion in assets globally. T.Rowe Price owns 129,017,741 shares of Snapchat which nearly 10.45% of the company.
Vanguard Group Inc
This is the one that always has a spot in almost all the “who owns” articles. Vanguard Group Inc is a mutual fund and ETF management company. It has top shares in many big companies like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Disney, Apple, and many more. It has a total of 6.2 trillion in assets globally. Vanguard Group Inc owns 84,427,412 shares of Snapchat which is about 6.84% of the total shares.
Edgewood Management LLC
Edgewood Management LLC is an investment advisor that is based in the United States. This company owns. 6.09% of the total shares which 75,244,676 shares of Snapchat.
Conclusion
These are the people and institutions who own Snapchat. Snapchat is becoming more and more popular among the millennial generation with each passing day. The main reason for it is the privacy it offers. All the photos you share on this platform can only be viewed for 24 hours of posting it after that the photos get deleted automatically. If anyone takes a screenshot of your photos then you will immediately get the notification on who did it. This is useful as you can hold people responsible if they misuse the photos. Learn more about Snapchat by reading the business model of Snapchat. You can also know about the ownership details of other companies on Zeen. If you want to know who owns Apple then click here.
