Soon after the news broke about alleged derogatory by the CEO of Snapchat Evan Spiegel, the rating of the Snapchat app hit to 1 star from 4 star.
According to the information available on the Google PlayStore for the Snapchat Application, the current version's user rating has fallen to one star. And in real time, may even have more 1 star ratings even while you reading this.
But, how did this disagreement start? Did Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel actually make those remarks? The truth, which many Indian publications chose to ignore while writing their juicy and clickbait headlines, is that we don’t know anything for sure at the moment.
a former Snapchat employee, Anthony Pompliano, filed a lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court in January. Snapchat, which initially made efforts to keep the complaint under seal, released the contents in a public filing.
“This app is only for rich people. I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain,”
Spiegel said, according to Pompliano.
We’re not sure about poor countries, but Indians seem to have taken this bitterly With some users writing, “Poor India & Spain need better than Snapchat”, “Good bye, My Snapchat Account and Snap Inc. You’ll be product of gone by era and mockery”, and “Poor Evan Spiegel”.
When negative news about your company becomes a talking point on social media, its never good news. When your company starts trending on Twitter for negative news, it’s significantly worse. Snapchat must’ve realized this when the hashtag #boycottsnapchat became a top trend. One user even reported the app for hurtful content leaving a comment “Dear @snapchatsupport, flagged you for hateful content. #boycottsnapchat”.
Snapchat seemed to have realized the hurt statements have caused and have released a statement remove off the comments as untrue. The Hindustan Times quoted the company as saying, “This is ridiculous. Obviously Snapchat is for everyone! It’s available worldwide to download for free.”
If the Spiegel did genuinely think that, he might have missed a very crucial detail. India, is one of the biggest phone markets in the world. Mobile phone subscribers in India are already in 100 millions with a majority of these users accessing the internet through the smartphones. Some reports have predicted the number of users accessing internet through smartphones in India to hit 730 million by the turn of the decade. A majority of Indian citizens, are teenagers and young adults, that makes the potential mobile users in the country over 350 million – close to the entire population of the United States. Ignoring such a major market might turn out to be suicidal for a company that relies completely on mobile use.
I think, being misinformed is more dangerous than ignorance. So, don’t believe anything blindly and spend more time in fact checking.
We cannot be sure if these are the actual views of the Snapchat CEO or not, but the damage has definitely been done.
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