They say imitation is the best form of flattery, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel isn’t taking it lying down.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who founded Snapchat, lists out “VP Product @ Meta” on his official LinkedIn profile. Spiegel’s LinkedIn profile calls him “Loving husband, father of four boys, VP Product @ Meta”. This appears to be a reference to how Meta has systematically copied Snapchat’s features over the years. Spiegel appears to be calling himself a “Vice President of Product at Meta” in a tongue-in-cheek way given how products created by his team are eventually copied by Meta’s own platforms.
There’s a long list of products that Meta has copied from Snapchat. Snapchat had introduced Stories in 2013, which allowed users to post photos and videos that disappeared after 24 hours. Instagram launched Instagram Stories in 2016, followed by Facebook, WhatsApp (Status), and Messenger. Snapchat had pioneered AR face filters (think dog ears, flower crowns), but Meta soon introduced similar AR filters on Instagram and Facebook. Meta is currently developing an Instagram feature called “Peek” that would allow users to post pictures that can only be viewed once, similar to Snapchat.
And much to the chagrin of Snapchat, these copied features have often found more traction on Meta’s products than on its own platform. By mid-2018, Instagram Stories had twice as many daily users as Snapchat. Facebook’s own platforms have become much bigger than Snapchat — while Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users, and WhatsApp has over 2 billion, Snapchat only has 111 million monthly active users. And these numbers reflect in the company’s valuations — Meta is today worth $1.7 trillion, making Zuckerberg the third richest man in the world, while Snap has a market cap of just $18 billion.
And all this blatant copying likely rankles more because Facebook had tried to acquire Snapchat on several occasions. In 2013, Facebook offered around $3 billion to buy Snapchat, but Evan Spiegel had rejected the offer. In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg had again reached out to Spiegel again to discuss a possible acquisition as Snap was preparing for its IPO, but these attempts were also dismissed. Meta had then responded by copying all of Snap’s features within its own platforms. And it appears that it’s this copying that’s caused Snap CEO Evan Spiegel to list himself as the Vice President of Product at a rival company.