Facebook is a social networking service originally launched as TheFacebook on February 4, 2004, before changing its name to simply Facebook in August 2005. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, in particular Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 or older.
Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed.
Messenger is an American proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and released standalone Facebook Portal hardware for Messenger calling in 2018. In April 2015, Facebook launched a dedicated website interface, Messenger.com, and separated the messaging functionality from the main Facebook app, allowing users to use the web interface or download one of the standalone apps. In April 2020, Facebook released a Messenger desktop app for Windows and macOS.
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat 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. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "my eyes only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.
Evan Thomas Spiegel is an American businessman, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. As of March 2023, he had a personal net worth of $2.7 billion according to Forbes.
Scan is a mobile app development company headquartered in Provo, Utah, United States. The company was founded in January 2011 by Garrett Gee together with his college friends Ben Turley and Kirk Ouimet. The company, owned and operated by Scan, Inc, was acquired by Snapchat in 2014.
Bitstrips was a media and technology company based in Toronto, Canada, and founded in 2007 by Jacob Blackstock, David Kennedy, Shahan Panth, Dorian Baldwin, and Jesse Brown. The company's web application, Bitstrips.com, allowed users to create comic strips using personalized avatars, and preset templates and poses. Brown and Blackstock explained that the service was meant to enable self-expression without the need to have artistic skills. Bitstrips was first presented in 2008 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the service later piloted and launched a version designed for use as educational software. The service achieved increasing prominence following the launch of versions for Facebook and mobile platforms.
Facebook Paper was a standalone mobile app created by Facebook, only for iOS, that intended to serve as a phone-based equivalent of a newspaper or magazine. The app was announced by Facebook on January 30, 2014, and released for iOS on February 3, 2014. The iPhone app appeared in the iOS App Store as "Paper – stories from Facebook"; there was no iPad version. Facebook shut Paper down on July 29, 2016.
Secret was an iOS and Android app service that allowed people to share messages anonymously within their circle of friends, friends of friends, and publicly. It differs from other anonymous sharing apps such as PostSecret, Whisper, and Yik Yak in that it was intended for sharing primarily with friends, potentially making it more interesting and addictive for people reading the updates. It was founded by David Byttow, the former lead for Square Wallet, and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, a former Google product manager at Google+, Photovine and YouTube. Bader-Wechseler left the company in January 2015, with the stated reason that the company's shift away from beautiful design and towards more minimalistic design meant that he felt he was no longer the best person to be at the helm of the company. Byttow announced the shutdown of the app and the company on April 29, 2015.
Facebook Slingshot was an instant messaging software application for sharing photos and videos with friends, designed by Facebook. The app was launched on June 18, 2014, for Android and iOS devices. The app was discontinued and removed from the app store and Google Play store in December 2015, after Facebook shut down its "Creative Labs" division.
The following is a timeline of the history of the photo messaging software Snapchat.
Onavo, Inc. was an Israeli mobile web analytics company owned by Meta Platforms. The company primarily performed its activities via consumer mobile apps, including the virtual private network (VPN) service Onavo Protect, which analysed web traffic sent through the VPN to provide statistics on the usage of other apps.
Robert Cornelius Murphy is a Filipino-American Internet entrepreneur and software engineer. He is the co-founder and the CTO of the American multinational technology and social media company Snap Inc., which he created with Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown while they were students at Stanford University.
Emily C. White is an American technology executive and president of Anthos Capital, a private equity and venture capital firm focused on consumer-oriented companies. She is the former chief operating officer of Snapchat Inc and former director of business operations at Instagram. White served as the COO of Snapchat from 2013 to 2015, when she stepped down to work on other projects. In 2016, White founded Mave, a personal concierge startup. She has served as a board member of Hyperloop One, a transportation technology company.
Snap Inc. is an American camera and social media company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was named Snapchat Inc. at its inception, but it was rebranded Snap Inc. on September 24, 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.
tbh was an anonymous social media app available in the United States, designed for high school students. The app was launched by Nikita Bier, Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon in September 2017. Investors included Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Founders Fund, Semyon Dukach, Bee Partners, Dorm Room Fund, and American serial entrepreneur and investor Wayne Chang.
Rus Yusupov is a designer and tech entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder of Vine and the co-founder and CEO of HQ Trivia.
Genies is an American avatar technology company founded by Akash Nigam and Evan Rosenbaum in 2017. Genies' consumer app allow users to create fully personalized avatars to be used in apps such as Giphy, iMessage, and Instagram. Genies also offers a software development kit (SDK) enabling brands to create a branded avatar experience and online marketplace directly in their apps. The company also consists of an Avatar Agency that creates digital versions of its clients.
Jeremy Liew is a venture capitalist, best known for making the initial seed investment in Snapchat.
