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🎯 Snap Map: Making location social

🎯 Snap Map: Making location social

A playbook for consumer network effects

September 27, 2023

Read time: 2 minutes 10 seconds

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“The feed was probably the biggest innovation in social media of late. But the interesting thing about the feed is that the more content you consume, the farther in time you go.”

Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc.

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Snap Map: Making location social

Chess Move

The what: A TLDR explanation of the strategy

Tech history is overflowing with unicorn consumer tech products following a repeatable pattern:

Profiles + [feed, posts, groups] = Facebook

Photos + [followers, likes, stories] = Instagram

Mobile + [direct messages, group chats] = WhatsApp

Video + [channels, subscribers, comments] = YouTube

Aggregated content + [communities, karma, upvotes] = Reddit

Snapchat’s ‘Snap Map’ is history’s best example of ‘Location + [native social mechanics]’

💡

Strategy Playbook: Emerging software surface + [native social mechanics] = business with network effects

Breakdown

The how: The strategic playbook boiled down to 3x key takeaways

1. Surface synergy with core product

Once Snap Map went live, it was discovered that Snapchat had secretly acquired Zenly: an app that let users see where their friends currently are, and message them to hang out.

Snap Map’s launch featured several innovative integrations between Zenly’s tech and Snap’s core offerings:

See your friends’ location as a ‘Bitmoji’ on a map, and chat with them directly
Post stories publicly to ‘Our Story’ - a collection of temporary Snaps, grouped by geolocation, that anyone can view
Discover stories through a ‘Heat Map’ which aggregates Snaps in a concentrated area from e.g. a big event or concert

2. FOMO drives repeat engagement

Other successful location-based products typically solved a specific use case, after which a user would disengage.

Google Maps: Get directions to your destination, then stop using
Messenger Live Location: Physically locate your friend IRL, then stop using

Snapchat’s incorporation of native social features to a ‘Location’ surface created a different paradigm:

Snap Map: Repeatedly check a map throughout the day in search for connection and content

3. Where there’s attention, there’s value

Ultimately, Snap Map got users creating more Snaps and more Stories.

The more Snaps and Stories users made, the more other users watched.

The more they watched, the more ads Snapchat could display.

On top of this, Snap Map’s subsequent roadmap of enhancements increased user retention and added new monetisation levers:

My Places to keep track of your favorite spots
Recommendations for places to go based location, friend activity, and saved places
Location-only ‘Geofilters’ to incentivise more Snaps
Audience ‘Lenses’ allowing advertisers to buy regionally targeted filters
Local business advertising for paid discovery within local communities

Rabbit Hole

The where: 3x high-signal resources to learn more

All 30 of Snapchat’s acquisitions, plus what they each became↗

[2 minute read]

Snapchat could be the most underappreciated tech acquirer of all time.

Few tech companies (beyond Google and Facebook) have pulled off this much M&A activity.

Here’s a complete list of the companies, cheque sizes, and strategic purpose of each acquisition.

Hands down the best interview with Evan Spiegel↗

[30 minute watch]

This one’s for the product nerds.

Get Spiegel’s musings on:

• How Snap Map is personalised for each user

• Why Snapchat’s app opens directly to the camera

• How photos evolved from documentation to communication

10 years of Snapchat↗

[3 minute read]

Snapchat has had a wild history.

Fierce competition from Facebook, followed by a rejected acquisition offer, followed by years of feature copycatting.

A PR disaster triggered by a Kylie Jenner tweet.

[Disclaimer: this was written pre-Covid stock price collapse. Read the hype case with caution]

That's all for today’s issue, folks! Don’t forget to follow along on Twitter [@tomaldertweets] and LinkedIn [/in/tom-alder]

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