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WhatsApp launches Snapchat-like features.

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WhatsApp could put the brakes on Snapchat’s international growth with today’s launch of WhatsApp Status, a new tab for sharing decorated photos, videos and GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. It’s another Facebook-owned Snapchat Stories copycat, but the twist is that it’s end-to-end encrypted like WhatsApp messaging.

WhatsApp tested the feature for beta users in November, and now the Status tab is rolling out worldwide on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Users can watch updates from friends and reply privately, shoot and adorn their imagery with drawings and captions and send their creations to all their contacts they’ve chosen with a persistent privacy setting. Sending media to specific friends is still done through message threads.

Status could also open up new advertising opportunities for WhatsApp. If it followed Snap and Instagram’s lead, it could insert full-screen ads in-between friends’ Statuses.

The new Status feature replaces WhatsApp’s old AOL Instant Messenger-style away messages. That was actually WhatsApp’s only feature when it launched almost exactly 8 years ago.

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The new WhatsApp Status replaces this old My status feature

“The original idea behind the project was to build an application that lets your friends and other contacts know what you’re up to,” CEO Jan Koum writes. But the company tells me it saw so many people quickly updating these statuses to communicate in real time that it pivoted to chat, but always kept the away Statuses.

Now WhatsApp has 1.2 billion monthly users, with users sending 60 billion messages per day, including 3.3 billion photos, 760 million videos and 80 million GIFs. WhatsApp is parleying this success in messaging back into broadcast social media in a way that could spell trouble for Snapchat. If WhatsApp Status takes off, it could hinder Snap’s global growth opportunity in user-generated content, forcing it to rely on squeezing more cash out of existing users, or earning more revenue from hardware or professional content.

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WhatsApp’s new camera creative tools

Instagram Stories, now with more than 150 million daily users, showed how appealing a good-enough Snapchat clone conveniently bolted onto a popular app could be. TechCrunch first reported that Instagram Stories was stealing Snapchat usage and lowering its view counts, according to analytics providers and social celebrity managers. And Snap’s IPO filing showed a massive 82 percent drop-off in its user growth rate from 17.2 percent in Q2 2016 before Instagram Stories launched to 3.2 percent after in Q4.

Instagram was bold enough to stick Stories in its main tab above its feed, while WhatsApp is burying Status a lot more in a separate tab. But Status has the opportunity to spread the Stories slideshow format to parts of South America, Eastern Europe and the developing world, where Snapchat doesn’t have strong traction yet. If these users aren’t already on Snapchat, they won’t even see Status as a clone.

WhatsApp had been positioned as few-frills utilitarian chat while Facebook Messenger sported all the bells and whistles. But late last year, WhatsApp adapted to the visual communication age with the launch of additional camera features. Now the question is whether WhatsApp can eat some of Snapchat’s lunch abroad without watering down its core product.

SnapChat Co-Founder Spiegel to earn $588 Million from IPO

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Snap Inc.’s co-founder Evan Spiegel has a $588 million payday staked on his company successfully pulling off an initial public offering.

Spiegel, who’s also chief executive officer, is set to receive about 36.8 million restricted shares in the company once the offering closes, equal to about 3 percent of its outstanding stock. Valued at the high end of the pricing range disclosed Thursday, the so-called CEO award could result in a one-time windfall rarely seen since Mark Zuckerberg took Facebook Inc. public in 2012.

Snap is offering 200 million Class A shares for $14 to $16 apiece, according to a regulatory filing. At the high end of the range, that could give the company a market value of about $18.5 billion, based on the total shares to be outstanding after the listing. It’s the first U.S. social-media company to go public since Twitter Inc. more than three years ago.

Spiegel’s award will vest immediately on the closing of the offering. They’ll be delivered to him in increments over three years, starting about nine months after the offering. The payout would come on top of his stake in the company, which could be worth more than $3.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The award was granted in July 2015 to motivate Spiegel “to continue growing our business and improving financial results,” the registration statement said. Regulatory filings didn’t specify what would happen to the undelivered shares if Spiegel left before they’d all been handed over. He’ll receive Class C shares that each entitles him to 10 votes, while the publicly traded Class A shares won’t have any voting rights.

In terms of awards for tech company founders, Spiegel’s grant rivals only the 120 million stock options Facebook gave founder Zuckerberg in 2005. The securities had a $0.06 strike price and ballooned in value to $4.55 billion when the social-media company listed at $38 a share.

Twitter didn’t have to list compensation details for co-founder Jack Dorsey when the company went public in 2013 because he wasn’t a named executive officer. When he took over as CEO two years later, he disclosed an award of 2 million options he’d received in 2011 that would have been worth about $45.8 million at the $26 IPO price.

Snapchat features may soon be available on WhatsApp.

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WhatsApp is in the beta stages of testing a new feature called ‘Status’ which is very similar to what Snapchat offers.

Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, is becoming increasingly relentless in the leeching of Snapchat as there are many aspects of the platform in its new applications.

Facebook offered to buy Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion but Snapchat turned the deal down.

After adding the ‘stories’ feature to Instagram, Facebook is prepping Whatsapp for the same upgrade.

This feature lets users share images with doodles and text captions, and just like Snapchat, they vanish in 24 hours.

To make this happen, a new tab will be added between Chats and Calls.

According to BRG, the move seems to be a part of Facebook’s new video-first strategy, which Zuckerberg highlighted during Facebook’s third-quarter earnings call earlier this week.

“You can see that a little bit in the announcement and launch of Instagram Stories and what we’re doing with Messenger and some of the additional tests on Facebook and the camera work that we’re doing in WhatsApp.

“So this is across the whole family of apps. This is a big part of the product experience that we want to deliver,” said Zuckerberg.

President Obama Ridiculed On Snapchat By His Daughter Sasha

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President Barack Obama has disclosed that his youngest daughter recently mocked him on Snapchat.

The US leader said Sasha had recorded him discussing the social network at a family dinner and then quietly posted a reaction to her friends.

It is not the first time the president has discussed his 15-year-old’s online activities.

In July, he said she also tweets, leading several media outlets to try to identify her account.

It remains secret.

 Likewise a copy of the described Snapchat post has not been made public. Messages posted to the app are designed to disappear after being viewed or within a short period of time, but there are ways to circumvent the restrictions.

“Sasha gave me instructions on Snapchat,” he said.

“One night at dinner we’re sitting there, and I had read that Snapchat was becoming really popular among her age cohort. So, I said: ‘So, tell me about Snapchat.’

“So, she starts explaining stuff – you can make little faces on your picture, and this and that and the other.

“And at the end of it, Michelle and I are sitting there. And I said: ‘Isn’t this interesting?’

“And I started talking to Michelle about the implications of social media and what all this means.

“[And I] come to find out she was recording us the whole time, and then sent to her friends afterwards: ‘This is my dad lecturing us on the meaning of social media.’

“And she took a picture of herself sort of looking bored.”

The president added that his wife – who joined Snapchat in June – and his eldest daughter Malia had “loved” the post.

Read More: BBC

Just two hours after getting married, groom divorces wife for posting their ceremony on snapchat

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A furious groom has divorced his bride for posting their ceremony on Snapchat, just two hours after their wedding in Saudi Arabia.

According to Daily Mail, the unidentified couple had a binding agreement not to share pictures or videos of the their ceremony on social media, only for the groom to find out that images of his new wife from the wedding ceremony had been sent to the several female friends, prompting an immediate divorce.

Despite the divorce drama causing a huge row between both families, with the bride’s relatives


arguing that the agreement was unfair, and the groom’s relatives arguing that he had been perfectly within his rights to file for divorce.

The bride’s brother in a chat with Saudi daily, Okaz, also confirmed that there was a prenuptial agreement between her sister and her supposed husband which got broken.

‘There was a prenuptial agreement between my sister and her fiancé that she would not use social-media applications such as Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter to post or send her pictures.’

 

Snapchat Photo Puts Girl In Serious Trouble As School Expels Her

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 A white, blond-haired Kansas State University student has been expelled from school after Snapchatting a photo of herself and a friend wearing black clay face masks with the caption “Feels good to finally be a nigga.”

The young woman, Paige Shoemaker, posted the image to her Snapchat story, meaning it could be seen by any of her followers, on Tuesday night. But the trouble started when a fellow student, Desmund Weathers, posted the image to Twitter, where it swiftly went viral — prompting public outcry, a formal response from the university, and a Facebook apology by Shoemaker on behalf of herself and her friend, Sadie Meier.

“We clearly understand that what was said and done was completely disrespectful,” she wrote, in part, in her Thursday post, since shared more than 1,300 times. “I did want to inform everyone that it was NOT ‘black face,’ but it was a L’Oréal clay facial mask. The signs that were thrown also is an inside joke between our friends that represents ‘West Coast is the best coast.’ We never intended for the picture to offend anyone.”

Shoemaker added, “We accept that there will be people who won’t forgive us, but something had to be said. Ask anyone who knows us, we are the most accepting and least racist people. We know that we will ride up and learn from this mistake. We will be better. … We know what we did was wrong.”

Kansas State University interim associate provost for diversity Zelia Wiley addressed the situation with a post to the school’s website on Thursday. “On Sept. 15, the university received notice that a derogatory social message and photo was sent out via social media. The involved person is not currently enrolled at the university. It is our understanding the second individual in the photo is not associated with the university,” Wiley began. “This racially offensive photo with a derogatory message has upset the K-State family and is not in concert with our principles of community. Such messages on social media are harmful to all.”

Read More: Yahoo

Usain Bolt Engages Kasi Bennett? Reveals ‘She Said Yes’ On Snapchat

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After reuniting with  Kasi Bennett, Usain Bolt jetted off to Bora Bora for a sunshine break and it seems that the exotic location served as the perfect backdrop for a proposal. The 30-year-old athlete shared moments from their trip with fans in a series of videos on Snapchat.

In one post, the couple relax on a boat with floral garlands around their necks. He captioned the snap: “She said yes,” adding a bride and heart emoji.

In another image of the young couple clinking glasses he made it clear that he was unfazed by the drama, telling fans: “The only person opinion that matters #vacation.”

One person that will welcome any engagement news is his mother Jennifer Bolt. She told CNN’s Don Riddell at Rio 2016 that she was desperate for grandchildren. “I would hope he’ll settle down, get married and start his family,” she said. “I know he’ll settle down because he has said it. He told me many times that he’s going to start his family.”

Read More: ibtimes

Find Out Which Kardashian App Beat Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat On App Store Chart

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It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the Kardashian/Jenner sisters began unleashing their apps onto the world, with each sister getting her own app that’s tailor-made to her personality, and a winner has already been declared.

Her name is Kylie.

Yes, Kylie Jenner now has the number 1 app on the free apps chart in the Apple App Store, beating out Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat and most importantly, leaving her sisters in the dust. No other Kardashian or Jenner cracked the top 20. Kylie celebrated her victory on Instagram and acknowledged her fans.

https://instagram.com/p/7oT1P8nGtg/?taken-by=kyliejenner

Credit: cosmopolitan