An example of WhatsApp’s new photo editing tool, which emulates Snapchat’s popular doodling interface. (Image via WhatsApp)
In the early days of mega-popular messaging app WhatsApp, CEO Jan Koum kept a note from his co-founder Brian Acton taped to his desk. Meant to remind him of their commitment to keeping WhatsApp a pure messaging utility, Acton had scrawled on it, “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!”
Today the world’s biggest messaging service is trying to stay ahead in an extremely competitive market, meaning it’s had to add a gimmick or two, and straight out of the playbook of rival Snapchat.
WhatsApp says it is rolling out a new camera feature which will let users draw on, and add emojis to, photos and videos. WhatsApp’s camera will also support front-facing flash, “so you can take the perfect selfie.” The new editing tools show up as soon as you open the camera in WhatsApp, or pull up your image library.
Features like these might risk crossing into “gimmick” territory, but they’re a favourite of 16-25 year olds who are the heaviest users of Snapchat. Snapchat’s photo interface was one of the first to let people send photos covered in bright, rudimentary drawings and stickers.
This of course isn’t the first time a Facebook property has emulated a popular feature on Snapchat.
In August Instagram aped Snapchat’s Stories with a feature of the same name, letting users create a slideshow of decorated videos and photos that would disappear after 24 hours.
For context, Snapchat has 150 million monthly users, Instagram has more than 500 million and WhatsApp passed 1 billion last February.
WhatsApp’s users base is clearly much bigger than Snapchat’s, even though it has been relatively slow to add new features like photo doodling. But adding them, nonetheless, will make it harder for Snapchat to break into new, tantalizing geographic markets where WhatsApp is well established.
Populous Brazil, for example, is a stronghold for WhatsApp, along with several other South American markets, says Felim McGrath, an analyst at market research firm GlobalWebIndex. “Snapchat will need to work very hard to challenge WhatsApp’s dominance in this region, particularly as it maintains a strong lead even among 16-24 year olds here.”
The same is true in several Asian markets like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and India, where WhatsApp is well ahead, and in certain European markets like Italy, Germany and Spain, “where [Snapchat] lags behind WhatsApp significantly.”
Chart via GlobalWebIndex
So long as WhatsApp and other messaging apps borrow from features that were once unique to Snapchat, like ephemeral messaging, filters and Stories, it will become “more difficult for Snapchat to break into markets where its current penetration is low, and it faces stiff competition from established apps,” McGrath added.
The silver lining for Snapchat is that smartphone users across the globe seem happy to use more than one social network or chat app. “[They] turn to each for particular functions or activities,” says McGrath, adding that Snapchat is more like a social network than WhatsApp. “Even in WhatsApp’s core markets, users could be happy to have the two apps site side-by-side with each other on their phones.”
Still, mirroring some of Snapchat’s popular features can only help dominant players like WhatsApp maintain their edge over time, and that will come at a cost to Snapchat’s international growth.
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