Entrepreneurship Assignment Case

Study

Name- Sayooj
Student id- 2101112039

A CASE STUDY ON SNAPCHAT

About the company- Snapchat is an American app which is a messaging multimedia platform
where pictures and messages can be shared developed by Snap.Inc. It was created by Evan
Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. Here snaps can be personalized and customized
with various features like stickers and filters.

Abstract of snapchat- The issue highlights the major decline in its user base of the US based
multimedia messaging platform I.e., Snapchat. This was after the redesign. This app is highly
popular for sharing temporary and one time view pictures known as “Snaps” and video
messaging and texting. It disrupted social platforms with its different and different features. But
between its continuous upsetting results, Snapchat realized the necessity to redesign their app to
make it user friendly and had the ability of re-disordered the social media platforms. But this got
them excessive amounts of criticism and the discontent and dissatisfaction of people was noticed
being voiced on various social media platforms. This issue of unpopular and improper redesign
affected them financially as well and led to a decline in snapchats stock value as well which
dropped its fame and demand on the social media platform. Even though the app snapchat was
not in any interest of changing its design again but due to its missing revenue and user growth

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

and could not reach its target and hence it decided to reverse its changes. In may 2018 a redesign
of Snapchat was released to reverse the highly criticized redesign it was done with the popular
app more closely resembling to its classic look but this did not help the company a lot to gain the
users back and the ensuing operational losses feared Snapchat's investors about its growth
prospects.

The issues-

The case has been structured to achieve the following teaching objectives:

1. Understanding the marketing strategy.

2. Understanding the issues experienced by various social media platforms in a growing
competitive surrounding.
3. Understanding how the marketing layout of companies requested to the consumers and
the to the brands.

Peek into its problem-

In the second quarter of its earnings released on the 7th of august 2018, U.S.-based Snap inc.,
that is guardian company of the Snapchat said that the amount of the daily active users had come
down to 188 million from 191 million users which was in their previous quarter. this was their
first-ever quarterly drop since 2014in their number of users.

Spiegel attributed the drop “a slightly lower frequency of use among our user base due to the
disruption caused by our redesign.”

BACKGROUND OF THE START-

Snapchat which was originally named as Picabo which was an ephemeral photo-sharing app was
launched in 2011.

THE DISORDER-

Snapchat had the first mover benefit in the messaging industry and vertical video space was with
Snapchat the app showed the necessity of millennials to consume ethereal and authentic content
which took into account their intense need to not miss out on the happenings. The growing
popularity of Snapchat rooted from the fact that the shared content got deleted automatically
which provided the users a good privacy option without disturbing their communication in an
effective and entertaining way. Snapchat also had become the most popular social media app in

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

the world and this disrupted the core social media platforms of companies such as Instagram and
Face book and messaging applications of various telecom companies.

THE REASON FOR CONCERN-

With the increasing popularity of Snapchat and its advantage of a coveted demographic, Mark
Zuckerberg the CEO of Face book had also extended a U.S. Dollar 3 billion buy-out offer to
Snapchat which was turned down by Spiegel in 2013. After the failure to buy Snapchat Facebook
launched app that was called Poke sending photos videos and ephemeral texts and also continued
to copy most of the popular features of the app such as the lenses and filters of Snapchat.

On the other hand, Instagram also blandly copied Snapchat's stories feature launching the
Instagram stories in august 2016. And in the time where Spiegel had spurned Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook has turned Instagram into a photo sharing service for just 1 billion $ in 2012. This was
used as key growth driver and a Snapchat killer. Revenue growth was slowed down substantially
in the second quarter, the company said that it still faces an uphill battle after an app overhaul
meant to fend off a bigger rivalry Facebook Inc as it adds Snapchat-like features. In 2017,
snapchat had struggled a lot with the challenge of beating Instagram behind in the cold
competition that had been on since. With all the features being remarkably similar in both the
social media platforms, the designs became quite order winning to the people of the generation Z
and the millennials. The later ambush began when the app Instagram had launched drawing tools
and entertaining stickers and funny filters. The company also spent about 36 million dollars
approx. in the first sector as it moved from Venice, Calif., to their next office in the Santa
Monica, Calif., up from $21 million in expenses the previous sector.

SNAPCHAT REDISIGNING -

After these issues, Snapchat got to the realization to take drastic measures. the company decided
to take up the mission of redesigning of the app to specifically disrupt the social media platform
and boost its saddening revenue. More necessarily the company felt the importance to address
the issues by inexperienced users, especially those from the older generations as they found the
app hard to understand and use.

The CEO of Snapchat Even Spiegel acknowledged his user's disappointment and said “a change
this big to existing behavior comes with some disruption, especially given the high frequency of
daily engagement of our community.”

THE BACKLASH OF SNAPCHAT-

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

After all of this, to Snapchats dismay, it soon faced the problem of backlash and had to redesign
when its global rollout began. When it had rolled out its redesigned app in January 2018 to
choose grouped users in Canada, UK, and Australia it had come up with sudden resistance. In
these countries the 83 % of the store reviews about the update were negative with a minimum
rating of 2 to 3 stars. The changes of snap chat's redesigned app showed an effort to control over
marketing on the media. These changes had lightly benefitted a few users, while a few pf the
users were still confused. Users had the need to swipe right, rather than of left — which is
obviously not a huge leap. Most of the people showed about their disappointment, and
complaints as they were not able to see the stories of people they follow.

The goal of Snapchat’s newly designed app was to make it easier to use but as the updates were
rolled out Snapchat kept getting criticism that its new update and interface was difficult to use or
navigate. "I might start using Instagram Stories now," Ashley Vasquez who was 21-year-old
snapchat user told so. Other users of snapchat began sharing a workaround for reversing the
update by deleting the app and turning off automatic updates before redownloading it, but
Snapchat offer suggestions against it. “It is not clear to us why the app re-design - the first
product Snap ever tested at scale - was rolled out broadly, and we are even less clear on why it
hasn’t been more aggressively rolled back already,” Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley told
so. Snapchat said its cash by fell 13 percent from their previous quarter to $222 million. The
report of Facebook's interest in Snapchat came after a couple of weeks after Facebook, the
world's No. 1 Internet social multimedia platform, acknowledged that it was seeing a decrement
in daily use by young teenagers in the U.S., although it said overall use by teenagers was stable.
“Our redesign created some headwinds in our revenue this quarter by disrupting user behavior
and creating some apprehension among our advertising partners, "said the CEO of snapchat Evan
Spiegel. Users were extremely disappointed with the redesign and signed a petition against
snapchat so that it can be reversed back to the old format. Whilst many celebrities had also taken
up voices reverse this redesign. And the reverse action here shows that this was a mistake, a
stumble at a valuable time for the app. As Facebook continued to put on pressure onto the
company, and expectations of the investors remained high, the last thing Snap chat needed was a
thing like this. Snapchat had messed it all up jumbling messages and Stories, that banished all
creators to Discover and wrecking auto-advance. With pride of his gut instincts, Snapchat’s CEO
Evan Spiegel neglected to listen to all the awful user’s reviews and its declining usage. A
summarized study showed a 73 percent drop in snap chat's user sentiment toward Snapchat, the
app’s user count shrunk down in March and its share price went way down.

IMPACT-

Even though after the continuation of the growing concerns and the backlash over its redesign,
Spiegel stuck to his words about the changes in the app. “The redesign lays the foundation for the
future of both our communication products and our media platform, and we look forward to

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

doubling down on both, "told Spiegel. Spiegel had said that the users were still spending more
than 30 minutes of their day on snapchat. But the redesign was still a work in progress. But also,
there is a potential that Snapchat has already lost some of its users in a long term. The base for
the redesign was to separate the personal content from that of the public one and professional
one. Spiegel stated that this did not work the way the company expected it to do so. The
executives of the company said that the company’s contemporary design hurt the results but said
that they were going to stick to the plan to keep the content of friends separate from other
publishers. According to them this would help them in growth and development. The redesign
not only disappointed the users but also concerned the advertisers as well. The redesign was
supposed to attract a broader audience but the opposite took place and got snapchat a lot of
criticism instead. When snapchat had significantly updated their software after its introduction in
2011, there was a split of two in the company’s sections, consolidating media content on the
right, installing a slew of other design changes and friend content on the left side. The snapchat
had responded regarding the negative reviews it received is that “Updates as big as this one can
take a little getting used to, but we hope the community will enjoy it once they settle in.” Due to
this, the investors have not been favorable to Snapchat while Facebook's stock continued to soar
above bars.

Impression of snapchat among the users of US that fell off a cliff when the redesign was rolled
out in the early years.

THE RE-REDESIGN OF SNAPCHAT-

In the middle of adverse reactions from a long time, snapchat users and entertainers to the app
redesign and the ascending doubts of analysts over the company’s future. And hence snapchat
after a lot of thoughts and processes considered going back to their old design. Evan Spiegel said
out that snap chat would make alterations to and tweak its redesign in the middle of “some
disruption” in snap chat's multimedia company. Snapchat told out that it is rolling out its new re-
redesign which is especially for iOS users that is far better than their redesigned version and less
confusing than their previous update. As per to The Verge, the updated version of Snapchat
redesign will put Snaps and chats back in chronological order, and moved the stories from your
friends back over to the right-hand side of the app. This is in context to the proceeding launched
new layout, which put all the content like Stories, snaps, and messages – from connections over
to the left side, with publisher and influencer content on the right. Snapchat began the work
algorithmically sorting out stories to show the one is from your favorite people and closest
friends first, rather than ranking them in a complete reverse chronology. TechCrunch had firmly
advocated for this algorithmic sorted out stuff back in April, as a similar step proved to
significantly boost engagement for Twitter and Instagram by making it easier to quickly get

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

value out of opening the app. Snap chat had also pulled out its stories from its social media
celebrities, brands, and other people who did not follow you back and pushed them onto the other
side of the app alongside professional Discovery content. For the users who enjoy a more
entertaining and fun experience, or are not popular at their schools, that could make it difficult to
know who has posted a story in the last 24 hours. Snapchat also reintroduced their feature that
allowed it to turn up in the camera mode, and users can again swipe down left to view the posts
from their friends. The redesign of the app was basically aimed at appealing to a wider
demographic and expansion of snap chat's user base on the social multimedia platform. It is good
that snapchat is listening to its users rather than blindly pushing ahead showing positivity, and
their new layout does address many of the issues with the app’s re-formatted design. The change
that is well received by the users is the scrollable feed that helps users to find relevant content in
a better and engaging way. Snapchat had seen a rise of 0.66% in technology stocks, which shows
its confidence in the new app. The company was expecting the user base to show increment in
the coming months. Snapchat had rolled out a redesign to the redesign for a minor group of
people. It is taking user-generated Stories and putting them on the app’s Discover page, where
they existed along side the stuff from brands, publishers, and celebrities, like of how they did
before the redesign had actually rolled out before the backlash. It was a tiny change but snap
chat's spokesperson said,” it is just a test, but it’s also a big deal, mostly because Snapchat was
very in favor about keeping friendly content and professional content separate when it unveiled
the redesign later next year.” The fact that Snapchat wanted people to know that it is “listening to
our community” implied that the move was in response to their user backlash due to the redesign.
Snapchat had taken a lot of trumpet and publicity for its redesign, including the famous celebrity
users like Chrisy Teigen and Kylie Jenner. Other than this, the company even responded to a
“change.org” petition asking Snapchat to turn things back to the way they were before. But the
redesign simultaneously took a major page from the playbook of Facebook relying on the
algorithms to customize and personalize what you see. The aim was to show the users more of
what they want with as little friction as possible. An algorithm was not the only momentous
change that came up. Snapchat had also reversed its course at the influencers and said that they
will be introducing better distribution and monetization options in 2018. But Snapchat is not like
Facebook when it comes to content, and it would not be exactly copying its algorithms. They
also brought back a previously shutdown feature called “auto-advance” where Stories
automatically played after one another. Snapchat’s main talking point for the redesign is a dig at
Facebook, which was shared by the CEO Evan Spiegel in an opinion piece published on
Wednesday and in a 60-second video. Snapchat saw mistakes in "social media" apps and was
attempting to fix them by separating the two words within their product. “Snapchat offered
‘social’ and "media," Spiegel said. Now, it has two feeds that embody those words. "One of the
complaints we’ve heard about social media is that photos and videos from your friends are mixed
in with conpublishers, creators, and influencers. But your friends are not content. They are
relationships," said the CEO of snapchat Evan Spiegel in a video explaining of the redesign.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

Most of the snap chat's loyal users were not surprised with the redesign to start with; earlier that
1.2 million users (about half the population of Arkansas) and signed out a petition for Snapchat
to revert back to its original design and this redesigned redesign would work out better.
THE METHOD-

Now the company had moved their stories made by the friends back to the side of snapchat that
also had media content. This change had aimed at removing the app’s unnecessary chat function.
The development of the mobile app was considered to be taken forward with boundaries being
pushed by the tech giants like snapchat and had believed that they have taken a bold step with
this move. As of Snapchat, the redesigning of the app was all about showcasing its strength and
hence its features an exposure and a chance to be utilized properly. The company had taken a
bigger step in the creation of professional content by expanding its ‘Discover’ feature that
allowed more content to show on user feeds. This feature did not only expand the content from
Snapchat’s content partners, but also from multiple verified celebrities as well. The content had
been reviewed by a team, before being launched up on ‘Discover’. It did not change in the way
of its functioning but just the way to use it. The app’s redesign was a massive improvement as it
had helped the app get a sleek and smooth functioning and performance which was appreciated
by the users later.

THE OUTCOME-

Snapchat had reverted most of their redesigned features and came up with their re re-designed
update which was very similar to their original version. Snapchat's efforts to increase their
celebrity statistics and celebrity metric transparency and peoples’ engagement initiated paid off
quite well. There was a progressive growth on its recent published user growth and quarterly
sales for the very first time after going public which had surpassed Wall Streets’s estimations.
Industrial experts like Daniel Ives who is the chief strategy officer at the GBH insights were
confident that the apps redesign would be necessary to dissolve the features that were steering
clear of older advertisers and demographics. In their new update snap chat gave their
inexperienced users media entertainment through various celebrities, social media influencers
and more analytical data to appeal the social media users and stars who had gone back to using
Instagram. The monetization of effort and time was made easier by making the data available to
the individual creators. “There is a lot of work ahead as we optimize the updated application, but
our early observations support the thesis behind the new architecture and the many growth
opportunities it provides.,” said the CEO Evan Spiegel. Snapchat had tried to draw the agencies
that used its advertising platform and there were several ways that helped them retain its
individuality. The success of Snapchat’s Redesign had depended on the content that is updated
on Discover Page and how it used the content for the advertiser’s benefit. Snapchat noted an
increment of 0.66% in technology stocks, that shows its confidence in the new app. The company
is expecting the user base to grow in coming months. The changes made by the company are

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

very beneficial for some users while quite confusing for other users. Snapchat then began as an
app for sending disappearing messages to friends, but it later some added professional content
from social media companies and other features. “Snap has their back against the wall,” told
Daniel Ives, the chief head of technology research for GBH Insights. “They need to work with
their user community.”

HINDERANCES FACED-

It had been just a year and half as a publicly trading company, and snapchat had already started
to lose many of its subscribers and user. It lost about 2 million users on a daily basis which was a
huge hinderance for the company to overcome in between their crises. Many executives of
snapchat had even said that customer base would shrink up to Q4 all the way from 186 million
daily users. Snapchat's younger audience which was the target audience had turned away from its
services. This affected their target audience and effected their marketing getting the company in
a worse state. It was also stated that all the entertaining stuff and their core market value was
sought of being copied by snap Chat's competitors. Thess features also did not work well in the
areas with poor internet connection. Spiegel and Snapchat were trying to work around these
technical challenges with a better version of its Android app, which was code-named as
“Mushroom,” but it became tough to foresee wide adoption if Snapchat’s “core product value”
had already been solved by something else. Snapchats plan of getting in and emerging in to more
markets and platforms became tough and risky. Snapchat’s popularity was affected when the
feature of “stories” which was originally a snapchat feature was featured on Instagram as well.
Many users moved on to Instagram which had become a down fall for Snap chat. Snapchat’s few
features were available only on iOS and not android when the two-third of the snapchat users
were android users and when Instagram launched similar features with better and same
convenience, due to this reason as well snap chat lost many of its users. Instagram had chosen to
blend the best of Snapchat’s features with its existing powerfully built platform. Snapchat even
said that “although our products work with Android mobile devices, we have prioritized
development of our products to operate with iOS.” but still the engineers did quite a work and led
to 20%V retention on the android users.

CONCLUSIONS-

Like every company snapchat too had its downfall and uphill. It was working all fine and
manageable until 2015and as it was something new and trendy which people actually liked. Later
after the unnecessary redesign of snapchat which was quite chaotic and confusing for the people

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

to use, it lost many of its users to other competitors who had taken advantage of this situation
which did not help at all. Over this tension even build up when the CEO of snapchat had refused
the offer of mark Zuckerburg to buy it and hence the competition began. After many bad reviews
and everything, the company decided to change their redesign back to its own original design
which the users vouched for. It had to do it because they had no other choice even though the
CEO was against this decision. After noticing the progress after this new redesign, the company
started working on making the app better in more ways as well. Kylie Jenner had slammed an
interface on snapchat which affected it immensely wiping out a billion of dollars in the value
from the company’s stock. Later the spectacles were launched as well. Snapchat has had a very
uneven rise over the ten years of its startup but it doing quite well as of now. This led snap chat's
core offering evolved into stories and text tools helped people express themselves in a new way
due to this. Snapchat had hit the bottom of the rock in 2018 after shares had dropped below the
$5 mark, and user growth had been stalled out then. But as of today, the situation seems quite
different than that of the past. It has a powerful market share with its daily users close to $300
million on a daily basis. It has the younger demographic. Snapchat is one of the companies to
benefit well out of the adverse effects of covid-19 pandemic. Another guaranteeing indicator is
its revenue as well. Its old design has evolved over the years and the overall user experience have
been quite tangled. It became more developer entertaining and friendly. Later snapchat had
recorded a massive quarter which revived its progresss rate from 2.9% to 5 percent as its daily
users maximized smoothly. Its losses shrank considerably and revenue grew which was
unexpectable.

REFERENCES-
https://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Marketing/Snapchat%20Failed
%20RedesignExcerpts.htm

industry once more. But the app had come in for excess criticism and discontent to their target
audience. The unfavorable overhaul had an impact on the business's finances and decreased
Snap's share value. Snap's CEO, Evan Spiegel, attributed the industry's failure to meet their
commercial as well as member key initiatives towards the makeover. Although Snap first
opposed updating its revamped pages, firm ultimately decided to do so in response to customer
complaints. It launched a refresh of its harshly criticized overhaul in May 2018, giving the well-
known app an appearance that is closer reminiscent of its vintage style. However, the change did
not significantly aid the business in regaining customers, and indeed the following essential
deficits fueled shareholders' concerns concerning Snap's market expansion.
This case depicts the managerial and financial methods and processes that the company snapchat
had adopted for eliminating their issues and their earning processes.

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

 THE TEACHING AIM OF THE NOTE-
The case is aimed at all business students, both undergraduates and post graduates. The field of
study highlighted here is management, financial studies, business strategy, leadership &
entrepreneurship, marketing and technology. The teaching and learning objectives are stated
below:
• Become familiar with disruptive advertising and unconventional marketing ploys.
• Recognize the issues businesses using social media confront in this competing industry
Recognize various ways inside which businesses disrupt promotional activities engage
including both companies and their customers.
This case can be helpful to the students to learn and demonstrate their design thinking and
thought process. The case also brings out the importance of the roles played by the management
and operations and focuses on the marketing strategy and mainly the competitiveness in the field.
It even focuses on defensive marketing of the company from Facebook. The case highlights the
company’s cause for concern, their re-design, their backlash, the impacts of it and their solutions
for their backlash and redesign and the consequences of taking up app and graphic design
strategies and investment offerings.

RESEARCH METHODS TAKEN UP-

The case study is made out of various research papers, case studies and articles. The objective of
the case study is to provide explanatory information. Reference videos and interviews were taken
into consideration as well for more and detailed information about the case. Multiple articles
were also considered to check the c compatibility and the conciseness of the case with the article
and know the uniformity and a wide range of opinion and issues.

KEYWORDS FROM THE CASE AND NOTES- Disruptive marketer, platform, social
networking sites, competitiveness, social networking sites disruptor, digital marketing, product
innovation, and redesign, marketplace, lenses, upgrades, users, company, Spiegel, messaging,
platform, challenges, subscribers, investment, makeover, promotional activities.

SUMMARY OF THE CASE STUDY-

The holding company of the widely used messaging platform Snapchat, American Snap Inc.
(Snap), stated in its second half financial results that perhaps the volume of its own daily active
users (DAU) had decreased to 188 m from 191 million subscribers in the corresponding period.
The company was a startup that already had rocked the social media marketplace with
capabilities like learn how to communicate effectively, virtual environments, and transitory
photo sending messages that experienced the very first annual decline in user numbers before
2014.
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, made an Approximately usd3 bn purchase
agreement to Snapchat in 2013, but Evan Spiegel declined it due to the app's rising popularity
and the benefit of its desirable user base. Facebook launched the fleeting photograph, movie, and
text messaging service Poke after failing to acquire Snapchat and continued to imitate a number

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

of the application's best-known elements, like Snapchat Lenses. In August 2016, Instagram
introduced Instagram Stories, a clear imitation of Snapchat Story.
Snap made the decision to rebuild the app after realizing it needed to take immediate action in
order to seriously disturb the social networking sites industry and increase its declining income.
Further significantly, the business felt compelled to respond to the complaints of new users,
particularly individuals from the age group that considered its program challenging to grasp and
also use. And although its worldwide slide started, Snapchat quickly encountered a pushback to
that same revamp, much to its consternation. It encountered immediate opposition when it first
released its updated app to a restricted set of customers in the UK, Australia, and Canada in
January 2018. 83% of the 1,941 ratings for something like the upgrade upon that Mobile App
within those nations deemed unfavorable and had one or two stars.
Spiegel remained steadfast well about adjustments towards the application inside this face of
ongoing worries and a mounting reaction. He added, "I look forward more to focusing attention
to ensure that the overhaul establishes the groundwork again for evolution of both our
telecommunication services and global news outlet." Spiegel already admitted that it might
require a while for consumers to adjust to the changes have been brought about by the overhaul.
Snapchat thought twice before switching back to its original look after receiving negative
feedback among devoted Mobile subscribers here on program revamp and growing skepticism
among experts about the company's performance. According to Spiegel, there has been "minimal
disturbance" inside the Snapchat network and Snap will tweak its overhaul.
After the application being overhauled, Snapchat struggled to maintain traction. It was dealing
with a number of difficulties, including the weakest pace of growth yet, decreased earnings for
every person, plus rising deficits. As per experts, it was required to win numerous fights in order
to regain their strength & business investment. Holdings of Snapchat fell by roughly 25percent of
the overall during 2018 and by 54percent ever since Launch. Again, for Quarter 3 of 2018,
Snapchat provided the very first earnings estimates.
This application's makeover seems to have been a significant enhancement since this gave the
application more slick, seamless functionality that consumers afterwards enjoyed. Just about all
of Snap's altered functions had already been undone, and indeed the company then released
another upgrade that was substantially identical to the initial layout. These attempts undertaken
by Spiegel to boost more openness on its famous metrics and information in addition to the level
of user interaction were successful.

QUESTIONS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT-

• Do you believe Snapchat should really have accepted Mark Zuckerberg's offer to
purchase it for $3 billion? Explain your response.
• What of all of Snapchat's features did Instagram duplicate, and why?
• Why did snapchat redesign?
• What strategy did Snap Chat use to counteract user resentment once their application had
been remodeled?
• How has Snapchat changed over time? What has changed about the app's approach since
it first launched?

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

The additional material for reference:
1. SNAPCHATS REDESIGN BACKLASHES REALLY STRONG. GETS CRITICISM.
2. Years previously, Mark Zuckerberg was unable to purchase Snapchat; now, he is on the
verge of destroying the company.
3. Bloomberg's Emily Chang reports on Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's comments during
USC's graduation ceremony explaining why he didn't sell to Facebook.
4. By separating "the social from of the business," Snapchat thinks the update will attract
new users.
Recommended Base Materials-
• the case study of snapchat, impact, backlash , hindrances and solution.
• Many companies have forgotten they sell to actual people. Humans care about the entire
experience, not just the marketing or sales or service. To really win in the modern age, you
must solve for humans. The schedule for teaching-
30 minutes- the students can be questioned and asked if they use social media and how aware
they are about the various multimedia platforms and apps for social interactions and questions
can be posted about the history.
Their preference between Instagram and snap chat and reasons for it. The students can be divided
into two teams and then based on the debate a note can be made comparing the features of them.
The similarities can be noted separately and there on used for the next question that is the
question 2 of the assignment.
Comparison between Facebook, Instagram and snap chat and differentiate the features.
20 minutes- the students can be showed the reference videos for a brief and as an introduction to
the case study of snap chat. They can be asked to make notes based on these reference content
shared.
The articles and research papers can be shared for clarity and for guidelines.
30 minutes- the assignment question 1, “Do you believe Snapchat should really have accepted
Mark Zuckerberg's offer to purchase it for $3 billion? Explain your response”, can be asked and
worked on it. The teacher asks the students to debate how and why the case's specifics relate
towards the academic model after displaying it from the instructional memo display.
30 minutes- assignment question 2- “What of all of Snapchat's features did Instagram duplicate,
and why?”. The students can take up roles of snap chat and Instagram and debate present their
features and differences.
15 minutes- the assignment question 3 can be answered by the students by a quiz or some
activity. A prior voting can be done asking about the agreement of the students with the app’s
redesign. 20 minutes- question 4 can be highlighted and discussed in a class discussion and
researched about it and suggestions and opinions of students can be given on the company’s
approach.
30 minutes- a comparative study can be done between the strategies applied by the company in
the previous years and their current strategies. And students' opinion on which strategy do they
agree or support on and why.
A quick quiz of test can be conducted to know the understanding of the students and asked can be
asked to prepare various individual oral presentations based on their understanding or an activity

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

where the interviews with Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerburg can be enacted by the students for
practical opinion sharing and understanding of their thought processes.
1 hour- this class can be taken for the final presentation by the students divided in different
groups asking them to present the brief of the case study to test their knowledge skills,
communication skills and know their key takeaways. Every group having a unique idea or
solution for the case mentioned above. They can even be asked to make their own case study
papers with the same case or a slightly different one but in the same but a broader field. Real life
case scenarios of the case study can be given and asked for the strategy they would have used in
place of the management and employees of both Instagram and mainly snap chat.
10 minutes- the class can be concluded by stating all the keywords and main points discussed and
learnt throughout.

THE ANALYSIS OF THE ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS-

Question 1- Since the company was confident throughout the power & scope of the business,
Snapchat has succeeded a little further. Those that really would like to continue pursuing their
mission, that they already have. However, this isn't simply about advocating technology or
technological fixes. We are talking business, and as previous web postings have noted, as business
seek startup capital, you're agreeing that strive towards achi

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4296924