Ephemerality is the key to Snapchat’s success

Recently, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel revealed why he turned down a $3 billion cash acquisition offer from Facebook late last year. Spiegel claimed short-term gain wasn’t worth giving up the business he built. Of course this is all from the perspective of a very young entrepreneur, and a very young business. 

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has been known to be pretty surreptitious when it comes to sharing secrets about how the company works, but today he provided a little more transparency around its mission and how it thinks about the communications that users send through the app. At the AXS Partner Summit, he gave a fascinating keynote speech (which you can read here), breaking down the things that make Snapchat work, most notably how the concepts of Internet everywhere, fast and easy media creation, and ephemerality combine to power the app. The speech was presented to media execs perhaps as a way to help them understand Snapchat’s appeal, and the new ways that people are using it to communicate with each other.