5 Amazing Facts You Never Knew About Snapchat

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Snapchat has quickly become one of the most popular social networks in the world, and it's one that you probably use every single day. We know We do. But have you ever wondered who created it? How many snaps are sent every day? Well, in this Facts in Five, We're going to answer those questions and some you've never even thought about, basically explain everything that you never knew about Snapchat in five minutes or less. Here we go!

This is Facts in Five all about Snapchat.

1. What exactly is Snapchat?

Launched in September of 2011 and boasting an impressive 100 million users, Snapchat is a photo- and video-sharing application that allows users to add drawings and texts and, of course, fancy filters to whatever they capture and send it to others as well as their Snapchat story. Of course, those snaps are only available for a limited amount of time, up to 24 hours. If you send someone a snap, it can be available up to 10 seconds and then poh, it's deleted forever. What you probably don't know is that the app was originally called Picaboo but then renamed to Snapchat when it was added to the Google Play Store in 2012. There are over 9,000 photos shared on Snapchat every second, and over 400 million snaps are shared daily, What this means is that there are more photos shared on Snapchat every day than on Facebook and Instagram combined.

2. Who created Snapchat?

Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Frank Reginald Brown, who all met in 2010 while attending Stanford University together. Brown was credited with the concept design after regretting a photo that he'd sent to someone after wishing that it would automatically delete. The logo and original name, Peekaboo, also came from Brown, but after a falling out, Spiegel and Murphy parted ways with him. After the incredible success of Snapchat, Brown sued his former friends and received an undisclosed amount. Another person who saw the app's value was, you know, a little guy named Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, who twice tried to buy the platform for $1 billion and then for $3 billion. But Snapchat denied him both times. That was definitely a good move for Snapchat because the company is now worth over $15 billion.

3. Where is Snapchat used?

Truly a global used application, Snapchat has been the number one app in various countries, including the UK, New Zealand, France, Norway and many more for years. Elsewhere, it's found itself in the number two and three spots in even bigger countries like Canada and the United States as well as Australia. In Norway alone, 50% of all smartphone users are reported to be using Snapchat. That's a lot of puking rainbows. Across the water in the United States, 20.8% of iPhone users have Snapchat, helping increase the total to nearly 30 million Americans who own the app. Interestingly, it's been found that 70% of users worldwide are women, and 71% of all users are under the age of 34.

4. When can Snapchat be controversial?

Despite the company's assurance that after the initial viewing the pictures sent on Snapchat are deleted forever, there has been quite a bit of controversy over privacy. In addition to claims from Forbes and others that images are not deleted as the company says, a big setback for Snapchat occurred on December 31, 2013. Hackers from an anonymous group breached the image-sharing apps security and revealed parts of the usernames and phone numbers from an alarming 4.6 million users. Now the group claimed that they only did this to raise public awareness and pressure Snapchat to fix the security and privacy issues. After issuing an apology, Snapchat settled with the FTC over claims that messages did not disappear and that the app took more personal information, such as location and address books, without notifying users. In other words, think twice before takin' pictures of your jibbily bits.

5. Why is Snapchat so popular?

Despite the PR nightmare at the end of 2013, Snapchat continues to be a huge success in the photo- and video-sharing industry. After receiving the Best Mobile App award at the 2013 Crunchies, the company saw the number of videos viewed skyrocket to over 6 million per day. Even brands have been embracing the photo-sharing service, reaching out to Snapchat's largest demographic, the teenagers. So, pretty much everybody's on Snapchat now, from regular people to brands. Even bald people. While the minimum age to use Snapchat is 13, that hasn't stopped the company from reaching out to a younger group, releasing Snapchat Kids, a similar app that allows taking and manipulation of pictures without the ability to send or receive them.

Bonus fact, Snapchat's mascot is called Ghostface Chillah, which of course was derived from Ghostface Killah, a member of the group the Wu-Tang Clan.

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