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Popular messaging app Snapchat – which lets users send videos and pictures that are short-lived and self-deleting – will soon be flush with cash after a mammoth initial public offering, but financial muscle alone may not be enough to upend a South Korean clone gaining a foothold in China and elsewhere in Asia.
Snapchat’s parent company, the California-based Snap Inc, sent technology industry circles into a tizzy this week following widespread reports that it had made a secret IPO filing to US regulators for a public float with a valuation of around US$20 billion (HK$155 billion).
The move fires the starting gun for the largest technology firm market debut since Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba – the owner of the South China Morning Post – went public in 2014 at a valuation of US$170.9 billion. Companies are allowed to make confidential filings for a US public listing if their annual revenue is less than US$1 billion.
Social media experts say the listing will allow Snapchat to make fresh inroads in the ephemeral social media space where posts are temporary, visual-heavy and largely light-hearted – a far cry from the more sobering, text-heavy content more typical of platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Since launching in 2011, the messaging platform has grown rapidly from being derided as a ‘sexting’ tool for teenagers to an influential social media player. It has 150 million active users, among them US President-elect Donald Trump and his defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Sixty per cent of its users are aged between 13 and 24.
Snapchat “comes closer than any other social media to the experience of casually joking with a good friend”, said Joseph Bayer, an Ohio State University researcher who studies the psychological effects of social networks.
And Jonathan Rudd, the Asia-Pacific head of digital strategy at public relations firm Carat, said the app owed its success to young people using it as a platform “to share their moments as they were happening with who they wanted to without all the stigma associated with needing to gain likes or comments”.
But in Asia, a copycat app called Snow, owned by South Korean company Naver, rules the roost with an estimated 80 million users, and insiders say Snapchat will find it tough gaining ground against the home-grown competitor even with its multibillion, post-IPO war chest.
Snow’s features are almost a carbon copy of Snapchat. The app allows users to share goofy selfies enhanced with a myriad of “filters” that add animation from bunny ears and hanging tongues to superimposed disco backgrounds. Like Snapchat, these are short-lived and self-deleting.
(SCMP)
