Snapchat — Ephemeral Media

2011

Evan Spiegel, Snapchat co-founder — pictured in 2013, the year the app shipped Stories and crossed 50 million users. Stanford undergrads Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown launch Snapchat in September 2011. Photos that delete themselves after seconds. The form invents Stories (1-day expiry) in 2013; Instagram clones it in 2016. Ephemeral becomes a baseline expectation of social media.