Snapchat successfully wooed Facebook executive Emily White, who had been director of operations for Facebook’s mobile operations, reported All Things D Tuesday. The mobile app company Snapchat is moving Emily White into its Los Angeles headquarters as their new COO, working alongside CEO Evan Spiegel.
Emily White began working with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom this April to bring in advertising for Facebook’s photo-sharing platform. The move to the number two position at Snapchat was abrupt: "It happened really quickly, but to have an actual COO role in one of many companies that is disrupting the communications arena is one I could not pass up," White commented.
A group of Stanford undergraduates developed Snapchat, an image-sharing app that now works on both iOS and Android, two years ago. How does it differ from Instagram? Snapchat, like Instagram, began as a popular image-sharing app that became wildly popular. Instagram allows users to modify their images with creative filters and to instantly share them on social media platforms. These platforms include Facebook, which acquired the company and also recently offered to buy Snapchat. Videos and photos sent through Snapchat on iOS and Android mobile devices evaporate within 10 seconds of viewing.
Snapchat reported in November that users of the app send 400 million self-destructing visual messages every day, which is about on par with the number of photos and videos shared through Facebook. According to the Business Insider, users shared 200 million “snaps” in June.
White elaborated to All Things D: “I have always been captivated by the creativity that has gone into the product…and I think that Evan has been looking for someone who can help him grow and scale what is already something that has changed a lot of the way people think about the mobile experience.”
The new platform provided by Snapchat opens new social media advertising options, which companies like MTV, Dorito, and Oreo have begun to explore. Ephemeral ads with humour engage audience and create a relationship to products. The video production efforts required for these brief ads come with lower budgets, making video advertising a more accessible strategy.