Snapchat is in deep trouble and the situation just keeps getting worse for the app that made its social media debut almost five years ago in September 2011. The company is already being hunted down by Facebook, which has shamelessly copied most of its popular features on Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and proved that it’s better than the original app. To top it off, it has also failed to make a mark on the Wall Street. And now, Snapchat has landed itself in a bigger trouble, thanks to an alleged statement by the company CEO Evan Spiegel stating India as a ‘poor nation’.
1) Disgruntled ex-employee talking spewing venom or the truth?
It all began in 2015 when former Snapchat employee Anthony Pompliano, who had been poached from Facebook, raised concerns about the incorrect growth figures being cited to the company’s advertisers. In his probe, Pompliano realised that while the user base of the company has increased only 1-4 percent per quarter, the company was claiming double-digit growth per month. According to a report by Variety, Pompliano claimed that the company was also claiming to retain 40 percent of its users after seven days, whereas the figures with close to 20 percent, nearly half of the actual figures. He tried to raise the issue internally but of no avail. When he went to the company’s top management, he was shot down by Spiegel saying that the app was targeted at the rich countries only.
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“This app is only for rich people. I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain,” Spiegel told Pompliano, according to the Variety report.
Pompliano even filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles court in which he states that the company’s user data has been exaggerated and that the top executives are “completely misinformed” about the statistics.
ALSO READ: After facing severe backlash, Snapchat goes in damage control mode, CEO says he didn’t call India ‘poor’
2) Social media reads. Not.
The report, which was published on April 11, 2017 has sparked a controversy that has resulted in some very unfortunate collateral damage. Hashtags like #boycottSnapchat, #UninstallSnapchat are trending on Twitter, and many people across India have blindly started boycotting the app for calling India ‘poor’. This was followed by a massive reaction on the App store as well, wherein the user rating of the app fell from five-star to one-star on the Apple Store.
3) Social media abuses, because it can
Miranda Kerr, the Snapchat CEO’s lovely supermodel fiancee was abused and asked to keep her ‘man in check’. Pretty amazing how Indians always find a way to abuse women for things they have nothing to do with. Be it Anushka Sharma getting trolled because Virat Kohli didn’t play good cricket or Miranda Kerr getting abused because the man she is engaged to may or may not have said something unsavoury about India.
4) Leak or no leak? That is the question
However, the chain reaction from the report didn’t end there. According to a report by the Hindustan Times, a group of Indian hackers have leaked data of 1.7 million Snapchat users on the dark web. The company, however, has denied of facing any such leak.
ALSO READ: Rating of Snapchat dropped to a “single star” on App Store after CEO Evan Spiegel calls India ‘poor’
5) Snapdeal = Snapchat? NOPE.
While people on the social media were busy boycotting Snapchat, Indian e-commerce website Snapdeal got caught in the crossfire as the netizens mistook Snapchat to be Snapdeal and started uninstalling Snapdeal instead of the photo-sharing app. The outrage could be seen on the Snapdeal’s review section in the Google Play Store, following which the company specifically had to explain the netizens that Snapdeal wasn’t Snapchat.
@thetanmay Thanks bud. Ppl asking us to make a statement that @snapdeal is not @snapchat was possibly the last thing I thought I would ever need to do.
— Kunal Bahl (@1kunalbahl) April 16, 2017
Interestingly, Spiegel has denied Pompliano’s allegations calling them “ridiculous”. In a statement, the company has said that Pompliano was a “disgruntled employee” who was fired for poor performance.
