The story of a social networking app

Hi, my name is Snapshoot. I was a social networking app that had once been on the top, and now I'm rolling down in the mud, trying to cling on so that I don't fall into the grave Facecopy dug for me. And today I will share with you my story of how I made it to the top, and was pushed down to infamy like GoggleX and Buddyster.

Let's start from the beginning.

The formative days were quite explosive. Not many people knew about me. My founder spoke about me at a product design class in Danford eight years ago. Five months later, I was released to the public, all hopeful and excited to be THE app on people's phones.

Now keep in mind, I was released around a time when everyone and their newly-developed AI assistants wanted to be an entrepreneur. Everyone had an idea that was waiting to be brought into the world with swift precision. I was lucky that everyone loved the idea of seeing a message for a limited amount of time and a limited number of times. Competition would be tough.

Unlike most stories where hopes get shattered on the very first day, my popularity was booming. The reason? Teenagers.

Yell all you want about hormonal issues in teens and teenagers in general being a big nuisance, I owe my life to their angst. Their craving for "privacy" (I don't know why having your messages deleted 24 hours after they're sent is called "privacy", but hey, it's what made me famous, so why complain?) was my key selling point. And after my developers launched my stories update in 2014, I forgot how the ground looked.

I was soaring. I soared so high that other apps started to notice my presence. Predatory apps. Apps such as Facecopy. Like a hungry eagle, Facecopy swooped down on me, ready to catch and absorb me into its portfolio, like it devoured Instacity in 2011 and WhosApp in 2014. Facecopy lunged at us with an offer of USD 3 billion in late 2013. But we were strong enough to shake that assault off, thanks to our teen feathers that kept us in the air.

Facecopy was desperate. They finally had a competitor that was advancing too quick for its comfort and could not buy out. They bought and devoured several other apps, yet I was the only app they couldn't acquire. Their messaging app Postboi, launched in 2011, was falling in popularity thanks to my message-sharing utility. I was truly a mainframe among measly PCs.

Ever since 2014, I ruled the social networking platform without much adversity. I was the app the kids were talking about. I was the app people would urge others to have in order to be "relatable" and cool. I was worth USD 22 billion by May 2016. I had a huge fanbase worldwide, loved and cherished everywhere. They loved my filters, Snap Point system, Snap-A-Days, quirky effects, and user-friendly interface. Sadly, good times don't last forever. I now even had the video-calling utility.

Facecopy finally hit us in hard 2016 with an update to Instacity, where kids would be able to share stories that would last for 24 hours. They also added the ability for people to share stories on Postboi, including the ability to add quirky filters to the snaps. They even integrated all the social networking apps they took over and made it possible to use them interchangeably. And though it's tough to admit, but they were doing better than us.

We tried. The Snapshoot team really tried. But Facecopy was just too big and too powerful. Not even the several scandals of blatant breaches in the users' personal information hurt Facecopy to make it lose popularity.

My developers tried long and hard to put me back on track. They tried the Snap Map, Snapshoot games, etc. But the competition was too good. My features were once unique. Now they're just utilities that belong to an app that is now considered to be archaic.

Days are looking gloomy for me. The kids these days are now busy with apps like Markify and other music apps. Even apps like TokTik have amassed some traction these days, though it seems like they won't last for long.

I'm still rolling around the mud. The mini-games and Kitmoji don't seem to be working as we planned, but it's still bringing us some traffic. I don't know how long I will survive. But I will fight till the end. And I will try to survive.

I will give the kids reasons bigger than nostalgia to keep me in their hearts, as well as their phones. We will fight our competitors in your phones. We will fight them in your PCs, we will fight them in sponsors' shares. But we will not give up. Facecopy may utterly defeat us, but not without a fight.

Aka is a tiny bleep on the world's radar, and he finds peace in knowing it. Ruin his peace by poking him onakaaraf@hotmail.com