Snapchat Hack

Lesson Details:

This course is brought to you by Appy Pie as part of our Academy series building a billion dollar valuation company in just three years is not easy that's what snapchat Ted in just three years in this video I'm going to talk about the growth hacking methodology snapchat has used in their initial days of starting the startup now this is a snapchat back in 2011 let's go more in detail made by students snapchat is co-founded by even Spiegel Bobby Murphy and Ricky brown as a student obviously you know that they there's a lot of funding limitation of sources resources and things like that but in just three years its valuation reached 10 billion dollars that's like really really huge amount let's dig into how they reach that and what was the growth hacking techniques they have followed now a snapchat as of now has many features photos nerve video snapchat stories discover stickers and so on however if you're building an app or if you have an app which you want to promote you might be thinking that you must at least have few some of the features in your you know app to start promoting and start building or before the launch so what I'm trying to say is before the launch of your app you must be thinking that you should have how many of the features you should be launching now what do you think that how many features snapchat had at launch so before launch how much of the how many features they have introduced can you guess the answer is just one photo snap and the reason for that is we will go into a little detail about this the launch strategy to avoid if you're not aware of this and if you are building the strategy for your own this is something you need to look at it's very interesting ideology let's say you have an idea here okay and then you have a big loan so you think that you're going to do a big launch so normally I would say lots and lots of companies would go for a big launch and thinking that okay big launch is something that you know they're very happy about in the very excited to launch the product but making the product effect by adding many features and polishing graphic in between is what is the the essence of building you know really really big company let's look into more detail about this now let's say if you have the ideology of launching big nobody will care that is the more or less the you know people mentality because you haven't actually tried enough to let users know or you have not retained that much of users because you're just launching nobody will care how big launch or how much money you are spending obviously for big launch you will spend a lot of money on FB ads like Facebook Ads Google Ads and so much of offline strategies in marketing and at the end unfortunately you'll see the company dies launch strategy what I recommend or what is actually the recommendation or advice by very very successful experts or the the companies who have made really really big that you have the idea you launch one feature at a time okay just one feature so in snapchat the growth hacking technique was like launching just one feature which was photo snap okay and have a very casual launch like casual on Spanish what it means is like within your friend circle within the network you know within the social media within your LinkedIn connections network or if you are friends and family that is a casual launch okay because you're not going to spend lots and lots of money on that moving on to you once you have reworked on that one feature thanks to your user feedback so whatever users you have or the within the friend circle or within the network try to analyze the matrix till this time there is no new feature happening okay second the same feature needs to be having a new version of the same feature that means release new version of the same feature now you must have seen that a lot of people a lot of companies they release their better version of the app and then they have like three four months before they actually launch the new version so you have two stages of actually launching your the feature of your app alright then if the product is good it has been it has a good retention rate that means users are coming back and using it then you can actually go ahead with the new feature Marketing push for new feature then that's how you will push the second feature of your app now this is exactly what snapchat did in during the initial stage for a very very long time they just stick to one feature which is photo snap and then they have the strategy in place which actually worked really well in their favor with the strategy you will actually get regular insights from your users because you're not going go hey wha your technical team is not you know confused of updating the older version of the feature or what should a you know go for the new feature and spend more time on that all right so your traigo insights from your users is very very important during the initial stage and spending the right amount of time so that you know you are not spending half of the time on the you know the very first feature and they're half of the time on developing the new feature okay it takes a lot of time developing the feature you you know for the especially mean for the technical team so if you spend the right amount of time to just nail each feature so that it is accepted in the market within the the community or the people you know for the you know initial days you're not spending lot of dollars so you spare dollars by not developing useless features that is again a very important factor because you will be spending a lot of money without knowing that whether your app is going to actually work or if people are going to actually accept that it also by not buying any of the ads no paid ads at all and having good retention rate should be the ideology now this is the that's how the snapshot has worked on that as I said on the only one feature which is the backbone of your app now let's look at the second one so snapchat what they did has actually in between they they struggled and let's look at this use your weakness so if you have any any bugs or anything that people have not accepted or maybe people are using it badly then that weakness can be actually turned into strength and that exactly snapchat did let's have a look at that so had they have this photos she be you know to be taken and then it gets told for for a day for 24 hours but what happened the the problem started to evolve that people started to take the screenshots of those the pictures which is a little bit of a privacy issue but what snapchat did and initially they had no idea for preventing screenshots from happening because obviously you can't control public however the users understood that quickly and made a huge number of spin shots which was uncontrollable but instead of fighting against it that means a weakness they have turned into a strength so we after screen shot actually became a feature let's look at its so anyone who's taking the screenshot it will notify that someone has taken the screenshot of your snap and they turned the app into more playful game okay so what they did that even they were awarding trophies for screenshot in your friends snaps and that's how screenshot at 50 snaps they get trophy but the you will get a notification that you know screenshot has been taken which actually is not so it's it's something to do with the privacy issue and that's how they have sorted out this problem going ahead the third is find a signature so let's look at what exactly they did now having an image with the text was another feature they had and anywhere on the web if it was coming as any image coming up as with the let's say a signature just like this so house-party zenlea is app map and pokemon go collection so you can see these you know peer signature is just there and because you're using it anywhere on the web people started recognizing that the signature is coming from snapchat and that became really really popular don't explain sometimes you introduce some features you don't have to explain now in most of the app you can actually save the image right on your camera roll that means on your smartphone in 2016 snapchat rolled out its feature called memories and we all know that what you could do is you can save it and it will pop up will come as a safe and if it's safe in the memory section inside the app so what happens is they're actually they're using the cloud storage and because it is not saving on your smartphone on your camera roll so it save a little bit of space a very simple growth hacking technique but very very valuable for the users and that is how you know they have come up with different growth hacking without spending much money you could actually have lot of growth hacking with the new business if you think outside the box that's what is the essence of growth not only the words the user have been seen saved and memories it's a basic English and that is how snapchat has grown and they have implemented these growth hacking strategies in smaller bits wherever but coming back to the earlier point I made is the rotation and the the users are actually accepting and liking and they're coming back and using your app or at your you know platform again and again is what you be needing or you'll be focusing on in initial days if you are just starting okay so this is it for snapchat hack I hope you liked it very interesting I will see you in the next video next one coming up see you soon bye for now.