Snapchat Archives - Serious Startups

Hey, have you heard the one about the startup that’s been at it for 5 years without raising significant money? Then, they close a $3 million Series A from Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, on the exact day their new mobile app hits #1 in the App Store.

Oh, and they didn’t actually have to pitch that investor from Horizons Ventures because he came to them.

That’s the true story of Bitstrips, the popular Facebook app that’s been clogging your feed with personalized comic strips.

When I hopped on a call with CEO Jacob “BA” Blackstock, I congratulated him on the round and all the buzz they’d gotten lately. I commented on the crazy week or so he must be having.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “But I finally got some sleep, so that’s good.”

Blackstock has been drawing since he was six, and he remembers making comics with and of his friends as he grew up. Consider it an analog version of the current Bitstrips product. The current digital product has been around in some form for 5 years or so and experienced some popularity. In fact, Horizons Ventures’ Li Ka-shing was an avid Bitstrips user, which is why he wanted to invest in the first place.

The picture above is an excerpt of the startup’s comic-strip blog post from last week.

Then they decided to go mobile.

The launch was executed in stealth mode. In fact, the team launched Android first and saw a few downloads, but nothing outrageous. A month later, the app appeared in the App Store.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Almost overnight Bitstrips was the #1 app not just in the US, but in 40 countries. (And, no, it hasn’t even been translated from English yet.) Within 2 months there were 30 million avatars created, and millions of Bitstrips are made every day. Even some well-known news anchors are getting in on the fun.

“It amazes me that we haven’t even translated it yet, but people all over the world are using it,” Blackstock told me.

Needless to say, the team in Toronto that launched an app in stealth mode wasn’t quite ready to handle the growth.

At first they experienced some challenges with servers and such. Then the complaints started coming in from Facebook users. Feeds were now filling up with random Bitstrips comics. The app was so popular, users were using it too much!

What a problem to have.

Now, with funding in the bank, Blackstock is focusing on building the team and updating the app. They have already expanded the sharing options to include Twitter, Instagram, and text, as well as released some holiday comics that can be customized.

According to Mashable, Bitstrips is following a “users now, monetize later” strategy. Since most consumer-facing apps take this approach, it’s certainly a familiar play. For now, Blackstock and the Bitstrips team see it as a way for people to connect with each other in a new and interesting way, which also sounds vaguely familiar.

Is it possible we’ve already found the next Snapchat?

This post may be a little outside of our mission here at Nibletz to be “The Voice of Startups Everywhere Else” but after reading Josh Miller’s, founder of Branch, Tenth Grade Tech Trends the conversation seems appropriate.

Over the holidays I was lucky enough to head back to my hometown in Indiana to spend plenty of quality time with my younger siblings.

My siblings are your typical, Midwestern middle school and high schoolers. One Direction and Taylor Swift dominate their Pandora while interacting with friends is priority number one.

My two sisters are 13 and 16 respectively and my brother is an 18 year old senior. My youngest sister, 10, would cry if I didn’t mention her but her thoughts are not discussed. Although it should be noted her and her friends are already addicted to Instagram, using my parents’ phones to check it whenever she gets the chance.

I asked the older three a wide range of questions about their usage of social media and the overall sediment amongst theirs peers of the various networks.

What I heard was a bit of a shock.

Facebook

The biggest surprise had to come when I asked my 13 year old sister if she used Facebook? “No, it’s for old people and it’s stupid! Nobody has it anymore.” (yes, I realize you’re supposed to be 13 to have a Facebook account but the majority of her friends we’re on it well before). While I laughed at her choice of words, my jaw almost hit the floor. Is it true? Has Facebook become so “uncool” that they had all already left?

I heard similar responses when I asked the other two. My brother had recently deleted his account but said that many of his friends hadn’t because, “their whole high school career is on there.” It seems my brother’s friends, who mostly adopted the service about four years ago, currently use it to look back at the good times they’ve had, not to post new content.

Instagram

I got a very difference response when I asked them about Instagram. Each uses it everyday. It has completely replace Facebook as their default photo service.

This echoes Josh’s takeaway that Facebook was smart to buy Instagram.

Twitter

But what about Twitter? Are the kids as hooked as you and me? It’s been pointed out before that Twitter is not a mainstream technology and Josh’s sister said, “I guess a few kids use it.”

I found a little different response. Both my brother and 16 year old sister, along with “most” of their friends, check it daily (but less than Instagram). However, It’s primary function for them is to broadcast things that make them look funny or cool and to find out what their friends are doing, not to find links and join interesting conversations.

The 16 year old said her friends are really into sharing quotes and other things to get them more retweets and followers. As for the youngest, “None of my friends use it.” The 16 year old was relatively new to the service while my brother had been on it for a few years. This lead me to believe Twitter is adopted more as they get older.

Snapchat

Now it was time to ask about Snapchat. Is it really a sexting app?

Probably not the most appropriate conversation to have with your little sisters (let alone get honest responses) but I drilled my brother on it. He said, “Yeah, I’ve heard some people use it for that but it’s definitely not its main purpose.”

All of them proclaimed that it was used to, “share funny pics with close friends that are too ugly or ridiculous for Instagram.” As for their frequency of usage, “basically everyday.”

The most insightful takeaway regarding Snapchat came from my 16 year old sister. “I’ve used it for a while now but it’s getting boring. I feel like I have to respond to my friends though.”

This makes me wonder, is Snapchat a fad? More of a viral service that goes out of vogue after receiving the 1000th picture of your friend pulling their cheeks apart in the mirror?

Conclusion

Teens are “so over” Facebook. Instagram is now the de facto photo sharing app. Twitter has their foot in the door. Snapchat isn’t just for sexting.

One final point is age seems to be the largest determinate in how teens use these networks and for the most part not geography or cliques

While these observations are clearly anecdotal and are by no means meant to be scientific (I can hear the comments on Hacker News now), it does provide another interesting look at how teens are currently using the world’s largest and fastest growing social networks.

Let me know what you think? Does this go along with what you’ve seen or is my family an anomaly?