Call it what you will, but however you may feel about Snapchat, you can never call the company a sell-out.
When offered a bid of $3 billion in cash from major social-networking site Facebook, Snapchat refused. This is not the first time they’ve turned down an offer of exorbitant amounts of cash. The first offer Facebook made to the characteristically quiet and reserved company was $1 billion but an increase of 300% did nothing to entice Snapchat to relinquish their consistently popular app.
Founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy have met controversy over the past few years as their app gained popularity. Sprung from a design project required for Spiegel’s Stanford degree, the pair launched the app from their living room in September of 2011. Since then, they have been criticized for the anonymity of the app and how the self-deleting images have brought rise to inappropriate behavior among teenagers. Despite several lawsuits, the app continues to advance and offer its users new options for instant messaging, such as the recently released storyboard option.
With over 350 million messages sent a day, there is no doubt why Snapchat would be a positive acquisition for a mega-social-networking site like Facebook. Snapchat does not currently earn revenue from the app, as it is both free to download and free of advertisements, thus an offer as big as Facebook’s would be rather beneficial to the founders and owners. However, reports say CEO Evan Spiegel is currently working to add priced services within the app and will not be looking into outside offers for another few months.
Sources:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57612199-93/snapchat-said-to-rebuff-$3-billion-offer-from-facebook/