image via yahoo news

Evan Spiegel, the young co-founder and CEO of Snapchat declined the acquisition of $3bn from Facebook.¹ His decision is so shocking and puzzling that we may wonder where did his confidence come from. I’ll briefly analyze Snapchat with SWOT.

Strength:

• Snapchat features the unique characteristic- messages delete themselves after maximum 10 seconds so it highly protects users’ privacy.

Opportunity:

• Snapchat, a new mobile messaging app, never stops explosive growth since it was launched two years ago. It’s getting more popular especially with teenagers, while it was reported that the daily use of Facebook by U.S. teenagers decreased due to the emergence of more alternative social apps.

Weaknesses:

• There is no way to save messages that are important.
• Teen users are extremely fickle.

Threats:

• It is the uniqueness that encourages irresponsibility of contents of messages people send to others. For example, my friends once received annoying “sexting”, and they believe that it really causes negative social impact.

• The rigorous competition in social media can’t guarantee any company the top position forever. There is a stack of mishaps in history. For example, Digg rebut the offer of $200m and end up selling for $500,000.²

¹ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/13/why-would-snapchat-turn-down-a-3-billion-cash-buyout/?KEYWORDS=snapchat

² http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304373804577523181002565776