Snap Partner Summit 2020: Recap and Reflections

Before watching the Summit, I thought of Snap as a social media company, a competitor to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and the rest. It’s not though. Snap isn’t just building a camera-first messaging app; it’s building the platform of the future. It’s building mirrorworld.

We love AR, but new entrants need to be able to differentiate meaningfully from existing platforms who are able to simply add more AR features to an already captive audience. While the widening of access to AR technology via existing channels (e.g. extensive filters) has been helpful in driving mass market adoption and familiarization, it’s also be... See more

Snap has a big, engaged base of users who are the right age to pioneer a new technology platform. It’s in the sweet spot - it has been around long enough to have a large user base, which is necessary to create enough adoption for a new platform, while its users are young enough (and geographically dense enough) to adopt a new spatial platform.