A picture’s worth a thousand words: Snapchat chief lifts the lid on his success

For young people, Snapchat is bigger than Facebook and cooler than Twitter. But a lot of parents may be confused as to what it actually is, and more importantly: What’s the point? But the app’s 25-year-old founder has come to the aid of befuddled middle-aged technophobes, with a four-minute video explaining how it all works and why it’s useful. In the grainy clip, the billionaire says: “Snapchat really has to do with the way photographs have changed. Historically photos have always been used to save really important memories: major life moments.”

Today pictures are being used for talking. So when you see your children taking a zillion photos of things that you would never take a picture of, it’s cos they’re using photographs to talk. That’s why people are taking and sending so many pictures on Snapchat every day.

CEO Evan Spiegel

He then explained the “three screens of Snapchat”, featuring a list of past conversations, the camera interface, a screen on which to watch people’s Snapchat stories. He did not mention the app’s fourth screen, Discover, which features video bulletins from media outlets. In May, Snapchat said it had 100 million users of its free smartphone app. Spiegel pointedly deleted all of the tweets on his account, with a Snapchat spokesman said that he “just really prefers to live in the present”.

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