So it can’t
have gone a miss to you, with what everyone is talking about in the news at the
moment: Snapchat! Why they (Snapchat) decided to turn down Mark Zuckerberg, Owner
of Facebook, $3bn offer. Well surely that decision can’t have been easy to make,
or was it for Snapchat? We decided to dig deeper and see if we can figure out
why this high offer got declined and what the end outcome could be?
I bet the
first question that everyone thought to themselves, especially Mark Zuckerberg,
was why Snapchat thinks it will be worth more than $3bn. Well the founders did
have their reasons for declining the offer. They stated that Snapchat was
engaging with other money-spinning offers at the same time that the Facebook
offer came about, such as a $4bn investment from a Chinese e-commerce company.
This will
have provided Snapchat founders with a sense that they can do exceed the $3bn
that was originally offered by Facebook. Although this won’t have been the only
reason as to why Snapchat would not take Facebook’s offer. Stating that the app
has been said to have been popular since May 2012 with 25 images being sent per
second. This will have increased in 2013 and what the potential of it could
become by 2014/2015 will be visualised and noticed by the founders themselves
and other investors.
Put aside
the fact that they believe they can make more money, the co-founder and CEO of
Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, was born and raised into an upper class family. His
parents have always been wealthy, living in a nice multimillion dollar home and
driving cars at the price of $56,000 to $75,000. With Evan Spiegel having been
raised in a wealthy background, maybe declining $3b and asking for more may be
easy for him if he knows he will get that little bit more.
What can we
class this as; greed, idiocy or badly advised? A lot would seem to say that it
is greed with the founders, but with them being as wealthy as they are it would
not matter to them much as they have an upper class background as a back-up
plan. The decision could be classed as
neither but yet a clever decision on behalf of them both.
Looking at
Snapchat and the potential that it holds for the future, with the younger
generations getting on board already with ‘SnapKidz’ for 13 year olds, which
allows kids 13 or under to take a picture, draw and create but save it only to
their device, surely when they reach an older age they will get on board with
the different version of Snapchat too. The generation and popularity of
Snapchat could be going on for a long time and whoever knows the real potential
of it, like Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, the other co-founder of Snapchat, will
know that they will need to make an offer to persuade the founder to sell to
them.
With
Snapchat not having any revenues or revenue streams identified, why did Mark
Zuckerberg decide to bid $3bn for the company? Well, with Mark being the
founder of the well-known social media site Facebook, he has seen how quickly
social media flourishes and the potential that lies within it. Around Facebook
he will have seen the popularity of Snapchat, with many pages getting created
as to where people’s Snapchat images can be seen and revealed, plus the custom
it brings both to Facebook and Snapchat itself through one aspect of the social
item.
From just viewing and seeing how popular Snapchat has become, it shows
the potential it holds and just how well it works with Facebook and all users
of the social site.
Why does
Mark Zuckerberg want Snapchat, maybe instead of having the Facebook built ‘poke’,
in its place he could use Snapchat and see what he can create with the two of
them together? Will he bid even higher for a company with no revenues in place?
Giving the ideas he probably has with what he wishes to do then eventually it
may come to him to give in, as Snapchat’s co-founders will not give in until
they get that higher bid off Facebook or another investor.
As we have
seen above, Facebook already has ‘poke’
in place, which is similar to the social app creator Snapchat itself. So why
would Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) want to buy Snapchat when he already has something
similar?
Well as it has been said, the idea of a ‘poke’ button does not seem to be as a fun idea or interesting to
many people as Facebook may have thought when they created it. The idea of the
‘poke’ button can be seen as rude to
some people and the thought of someone ‘poking’
them through Facebook may not seem appropriate.
The idea
that was created by Facebook did not take off as well as they thought and when
Snapchat came about, a whole other idea was exciting and everyone got on board
to start using it. People could add their friends, screenshot, embarrass
people, and create images that will never be seen again and so on. The
qualities and fun aspects that it came with proved to be a hit with many
straight away and with the younger generation too.
Having seen
this, Mark Zuckerberg will have noticed how much of a hit this was compared to
what was created for the social media site Facebook and the difference in how
people have used it and view the aspect of both.
Everything today and in the
future is getting more about being social and what can be done more to keep on
improving that, and that will be what Zuckerburg knows he needs to do and what
he wants to do to keep improving Facebook itself and be the owner of two
popular social media aspects.
So can we
class Snapchat as a fad or can it be a way for young people to defy their
parents who won’t let them have a Facebook account? Well Snapchat is a lived
craze, but for now it doesn’t seem to be a short lived one. The potential that
it has and the amount of users it has currently is high and certainly this will
keep on growing for quite a while, hence the reason there are many added
potential investors and people that wish to buy Snapchat.
Many can
see Snapchat as a fad, for a while as the idea of it is exciting and no-one seems
to have gone off the idea as of yet. People are having fun with friends and
family, having experiences that they can joke about and be used as a social
concept between them all.
In saying
all this about younger generation, is this a way for them to just defy their
parents who won’t let them have a Facebook account? Snapchat generally would
not be a way for younger kids to want to defy their parents who will not let
them have their own Facebook account as of yet.
The general
age of Snapchat users is 13 to 23 years old, and those of 13 and under can only
use Snapchat in a safe way. Anyone above that age generally most will have a
Facebook account already themselves.
If someone over the age of 14 was to have
Snapchat, then they may as well have a Facebook account. Both of these social
networks provide the essence and platform that anyone who uses either can
communicate with anyone they wish too, and can be seen and contacted as
Facebook provides private messaging service and Snapchat, screenshots can be taken
to save for who wants it for themself.
So how many
of Snapchat users actually have a Facebook account? Well let’s see as to
whether the amount of people that use Snapchat also use Facebook too. The ratio
could be quite different depending how Snapchat offers the ‘SnapKidz’ version
to younger people who won’t be allowed to use Facebook as of yet. Saying that
there has been pages and social content created on Facebook as to where people
can screenshot what a person sends to another on Snapchat, then use Facebook to
advertise that on there.
So whoever use’s Snapchat will want to use Facebook in
case an image of them may appear on that social network site, that they won’t
know of if they do not have a Facebook account.
Most people
who have Snapchat do have a Facebook account also. Snapchat gives a different
concept to what Facebook does; the image that is seen doesn’t stay around and
is a digital way to send photos that won’t be there all the time.
Now we come
to thinking what would Facebook be gaining through the purchase of Snapchat?
There are a lot of reasons as to why Mark Zuckerburg wanted to purchase Snapchat
for $3bn, such as the future of Facebook being developed, help Facebook’s
branding, develop the usage of mobile devices and much more.
He would be
thinking about how the future of Facebook could be improved and helped along
the way with Snapchat. Snapchat may not be around forever or the craze may not
go on much longer than the next couple of years, but Facebook could do some
developments with it that along the way that will help Facebook as well as
Snapchat itself.
Seeing how
much awareness the declining of the $3bn offer has raised and the shock value
it has created, it goes to show just how important Snapchat is, from the
younger generation to the older, even though it may be in different concepts.
Snapchat will still be popular for at least the
next couple of years given how it is in today’s society, so if Mark Zuckerberg
was to manage to offer more and gain Snapchat for himself then he would be able
to work and create something that would be even bigger, more fun and exciting
than what Snapchat currently is like.
It would develop the social media world
and the aspect of all social media in different concepts, hopefully bringing
around new inventions and new opportunities for the younger generation to take
benefit of.
So now what
is next? Will Mark Zuckerberg offer a higher bid for Snapchat? Will he give in?
Will someone new come in and bid higher? Or maybe the founders of Snapchat come
up with a new idea themselves and improve the future of Snapchat and social
media generation itself.
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Please take
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